Ameya Jalihal, Ph.D. (alumnus, graduated in December 2020) Chemistry, College of LSA Faculty: Nils G. Walter Dissertation Defense, Thursday, December 10, 2020 “To find and to form: Strategies for intracellular molecular target search and higher-order assembly” Ameya Jalihal, advisor: Nils G. Walter Google Scholar LinkedIn What are your research interests? I’m interested in how…
Photo: Jalihal describing his research based on live cell single particle tracking. Growing up in Chennai, in South India, Ameya Jalihal, Ph.D., has always loved going on nature walks, watching birds, and collecting insects and seashells. While observing nature and biodiversity, young Jalihal had many questions that fueled his passion for life sciences. Inspired by…
Meredith Purchal Ph.D. Candidate Program in Chemical Biology, College of LSA Faculty: Kristin Koutmou and Markos Koutmos Koutmos lab Koutmou lab Linkedin What are your research interests? I am primarily interested structurally characterizing the interactions between RNA and RNA modifying enzymes using x-ray crystallography. Post transcriptional modification of RNA is widespread and ubiquitous, adding a…
More information and required registration are available here. Dr. Melissa Moore, chief scientific officer at Moderna Therapeutics, will be hosted for a virtual seminar on February 10, 2021, 4:00– 5:00pm EST by the University of Michigan Center for RNA Biomedicine as part of the worldwide RNA Collaborative Seminar Series. The title of her talk is:…
In our September 2020 issue of RNA Translated, 2020 the year of the RNA virus, we presented how University of Michigan (U-M) Center for RNA Biomedicine’s scientists pivoted their research to address the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them is Dr. Chinnaiyan and his team of prostate cancer researchers who focused on two proteins that are…
Jiaqiang Zhu, Ph.D. Candidate Biostatistics, School of Public Health Principal Investigator/Faculty: Xiang Zhou Group (http://xzlab.org ) What are your research interests? My research interests involve the development of efficient statistical methods and computational tools for large-scale genomic studies, including bulk and single cell RNA sequencing, bisulfite sequencing, and spatially resolved transcriptomics. How does RNA relate…
Tasha Thong Graduate Student Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health Faculty: Justin Colacino Twitter: @tashathong Instagram: tashathong Google Scholar: Tasha Thong What are your research interests? My research is focused on uncovering the biological basis for racial disparities in breast cancer by exploring the relationship between normal mammary stem cells, genetics, and…
The 2020 Nobel Prize of Chemistry recognizes Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany, and Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley, USA, “for the development of a method for genome editing.” Every year, the University of Michigan Complex Systems invites U-M faculty to comment about the Nobel Prizes awards. In…
Only a couple of weeks after defending her Ph.D. thesis in November, Sarah Owen, a graduate student in Chemical Engineering in Dr. Sunitha Nagrath’s lab, landed her dream job. “It all went very fast,” she explained, “I had a seven-hour zoom interview on Thursday, and they offered me the job the following Monday!” In January…
Robb Welty Post-doctoral fellow Chemistry Principal Investigator/Faculty: Nils Walter Google scholar What are your research interests? Academically speaking, my scientific interests lie at the intersection of chemistry, physics, and biology. I suppose that I just enjoy figuring out how systems work. It turns out that physics provides an awesome framework for figuring things out,…
The RNA Collaborative Seminar Series is pleased to welcome its 17th and 18th partners, the Cambridge RNA Club (UK) and the Groupe de Recherche RNA (GDR RNA – France). The Cambridge RNA Club is an informal seminar series bringing together the RNA community in Cambridge and surrounding areas. The GDR RNA aims to bring together French…
Laura Scott, Ph.D. Research Professor Biostatistics School of Public Health email: ljst@umich.edu What are your research interests? I want to understand how a persons sex, genetics and physiology influences both gene expression and degradation to create differences in gene expression between people, and how differences in gene expression influence disease. Who/what brought you to science?…
A Washington Post video (duration 6’16”) – December 8, 2020 How mRNA helped scientists create a COVID-19 vaccine in record time Our RNA scientists, Alice Telesnitsky, Microbiology and Immunology, and Nils G. Walter, Chemistry, Biophysics & Biological Chemistry and co-director of the Center for RNA Biomedicine, explain how RNA research allows to save millions of…
“Over the years, studies have found that more than 80% of the genome may be involved in transcription, or producing noncoding RNA,” said Andrzej Wierzbicki, a professor in the University of Michigan Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. “So the dilemma was: Is all this noncoding RNA functional? Is it important for something? Or…
Stephen C.J. Parker, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics Department of Human Genetics Contact Lab website Research interests We study the effects of genetic variation on chromatin architecture and transcriptional regulation at single-cell resolution. Our research group uses an integrative approach in the general fields of computational biology and functional genomics. The…
The observation of single biomolecules in real-time is crucial for our understanding of the cellular biology that is assembled from these molecules, be they DNA, RNA or protein. The recent development of an array of tools and techniques for single-molecule analysis allows studies at an extremely small scale (nanometers, or 10-9 meters) over short periods…
The Center’s Executive Committee welcomes two new members, Sara Aton, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, College of LSA (left), and Laura Scott, Ph.D., Research Professor, Biostatistics, School of Public Health (right). Read Sara Aton “Featured scientist” profile. We thank again our Executive Committee former members for their important contributions to the Center’s…
Our 5th Annual Symposium will take place Thursday and Friday, March 25th and 26th, 2021, 11:00–2:30 EST. VIRTUAL and NOT RECORDED, free and open to all – registration required. RNA research shapes revolutionary scientific paths, from fundamental science discoveries in the labs to powerful biomedical applications for patients. The rapid rise of RNA-guided genome…
Zhonggang Hou, Ph.D. Research Investigator Biological Chemistry Medical School Yan Zhang lab CRISPR-Cas is a very diverse adaptive immune system found in bacteria and archaea. It uses a small RNA as guide to find and destroy its target. It has revolutionized the field of genome engineering once adapted as tools for use in Eukaryotes. However,…
Welcome to our 2019–2020 new members, Dr. Analisa DiFeo, Ph.D., and Dr. Joshi Alumkal, M.D.! In this video (5′ 28″), they present their main research topic, respectively on ovarian cancer and prostate cancer, as well as their motivation and interests in RNA research.
