Principal Investigator

Lynne Maquat, Ph.D. University of Rochester work Rochester NY Lynne_Maquat@urmc.rochester.edu

Honors & News

January 10, 2013

URMC Biochemistry Professor Named University of Rochester 2013 Presidential Diversity Award Recipient

University of Rochester President Joel Seligman, with 2013 Diversity Award winners Suzanne Piotrowski (THSP), Kevin Graham (THSP), Alyssa Cannarozzo (THSP), Lynne Maquat of the Medical Center, Kim Muratore (THSP), and Vice Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity Vivian Lewis.

Lynne Maquat, Ph.D., J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair & Professor, Biochemistry & Biophysics; Director, University of Rochester Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics; Chair, University of Rochester Graduate Women in Science, has been selected to receive one of two 2013 Presidential Diversity Awards for exemplary contributions to the University’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Dr. Maquat is being honored for combining her groundbreaking research agenda with a lifelong commitment to helping women succeed in science. Her remarkable accomplishments include the networking and mentoring programs she initiated as president of the RNA Society; her creation in 2003 of the University of Rochester Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) program; and her award and renewal of an NIH training grant that supports graduate students, including underrepresented minorities, in the cellular, biochemical and molecular sciences.
The Presidential Diversity Awards were created in 2009 by President Joel Seligman to recognize faculty, staff, students, units, departments or teams that demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion through recruitment and retention efforts, teaching, research, multi-cultural programming, cultural competency, community outreach activities, or other initiatives.
May 8, 2012

Chenguang Gong Receives 2012 Scaringe and China Scholarship Council Awards

Chenguang Gong, M.S., a graduate student in the laboratory of Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., the J. Lowell Orbison Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Director of the Center for RNA Biology, was awarded one of two 2012 Graduate Student Scaringe Awards from the RNA Society. Each year, the award is given to recognize graduate students who publish the best papers of the previous year in the areas of interest to the society. Gong was honored for his first-author publication in Nature (2011), which describes a new role for long non-coding RNAs in humans. Gong also has a first-author publication in Genes & Development (2009) and several review articles from his graduate work in the Maquat lab. Gong will receive the award in early June at the Annual Meeting of the RNA Society. As part of the award, Gong is invited to write a review for the society’s journal RNA.

Gong also received a Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad. Established in 2003 by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), this award encourages research excellence and recognizes overseas Chinese students with outstanding academic accomplishments. The award includes a $5,000 cash prize and a CSC-issued certificate. Gong will join 30 other Chinese graduate students in the CSC’s ten-state jurisdiction, which includes not only New York but also Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont, at the Awards Ceremony held on May 25 in New York City.
March 23, 2012

Lynne Maquat Named 2012 Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow

Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics and Director for the Center for RNA Biology, Lynne Maquat, Ph.D., has been named a 2012 Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Batsheva de Rothschild (1914-1999) was a biologist, trained at the Sorbonne, Paris and at Columbia University, New York. She worked for a while at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
The Batsheva Fund was established as a private endowment fund, first in New York City and afterwards, in 1965, in Israel. In 1993 she generously transferred the fund to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 1958 she became the only one ever, from her legendary family, to settle in Israel and became active in public life. Science and the arts were the two loves of this exceptional woman. In 1989 she was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for her many contributions to Israeli society, among them the founding of Israel's Batsheva and Bat Dor Dance Companies. The Batsheva Fund's purpose is to further Science in Israel for the people of Israel.
May 13, 2011

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Holds Annual Awards Ceremony

Department Chair, Robert Bambara, Ph.D. and recent Biochemistry & Biophysics Graduates.

The department of Biochemistry & Biophysics held its annual awards ceremony to celebrate those students that received their doctoral degree this year. Awards were also given out to various students and faculty members for their respective research and teaching contributions. The following awards were given:

Walter Bloor Award for Excellent Ph.D. Thesis

Keith Connolly and Christopher Hine

George Metzger Award for Excellence in Biophysics Ph.D. Thesis

Jessica Snyder

Marvel-Dare Nutting Award Recognizing an Outstanding Biochemistry Ph.D.

Tamara Caterino

William Neuman Award in Biophysics

Paul Black

William Neuman Travel Awards

Paul Black, He Fang, Nicholas Leioatts, and Wenhua Wang

Excellent Student Seminar Presentations

Wen Shen, Karyn Schmidt, Krystle McLaughlin, and Nicholas Leioatts

Faculty Teaching Awards

David Mathews, Ph.D. and Lynne Maquat, Ph.D.

Staff Recognition Award

Melissa Vera
May 4, 2011

Dr. Lynne Maquat Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Dr. Lynne Maquat was elected to join an elite group of exceptional scientists that make up the National Academy of Sciences. Her election was based on her development of the field of nonsense mediated message decay described in detail on her laboratory website. Her accomplishments include leading this area that focuses on mechanisms by which cells recognize and remove flawed RNAs before they can encode defective proteins, publishing in journals such as Cell and Nature, and training highly successful students and fellows. She is only the third faculty member in the University of Rochester Medical Center with this honor and joins Dr. Fred Sherman as the second member of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the Academy.

The 2010-2011 Faculty & Student Honors Slideshow can be viewed here
February 9, 2011

Scientists Discover Gene Regulation Mechanism Unique to Primates

Scientists have discovered a new way genes are regulated that is unique to primates, including humans and monkeys. Though the human genome – all the genes that an individual possesses – was sequenced 10 years ago, greater understanding of how genes function and are regulated is needed to make advances in medicine, including changing the way we diagnose, treat and prevent a wide range of diseases.
It's extremely valuable that we've sequenced a large bulk of the human genome, but sequence without function doesn't get us very far, which is why our finding is so important, said Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., lead author of the new study published today in the journal Nature.
June 28, 2010

Maquat Receives International RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award

Lynne Maquat, Ph.D., J. Lowell Orbison Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, was honored with the RNA Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in Service on Saturday, June 26 at the society's 15^th annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. Maquat has been a member of the society since its formation in 1993, and has played an extremely active role, holding every elective office from director, to secretary/treasurer, to president.
March 1, 2010

Lynne Maquat Featured in ASCB Newsletter

Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., the Dean's Endowed Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has been featured in the March 2010 American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Newsletter for her contributions to mRNA research. Maquat demonstrated that in mRNA, the nonsense tidied up after itself through a process called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD).

The problem goes way back, explains Joan Steitz of Yale. But I consider Lynne the pioneer—and it took her a number of years—in figuring out this mysterious process called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. Nearly everyone working with mRNA realized that somehow cells can tell when a premature stop codon has been inserted into an open reading frame. Yet no one had an explanation of what happened to these nonsense proteins. According to Steitz, the big leap came when Maquat figured out that introns must leave a mark on newly synthesized mRNA. Working with Melissa Moore in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Maquat identified that mark—the exon junction complex (EJC).

The full ACSB March 2010 Newsletter can be viewed here, with Dr. Maquat's profile beginning on page 15.
April 17, 2008

Researchers Discover Critical Detail of Cellular Defense Against Genetic Mistakes

In recent years, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have revealed the existence of a natural surveillance system called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) that determines which mRNAs are fit to serve as protein templates and sees to the destruction of those with flaws. Researchers hope to tweak the process such that it catches more genetic errors in some cases, or leaves more templates for helpful proteins in place in others, based on the disease at hand. To do so will require a highly detailed knowledge of the NMD pathway.

The current results uncover a critical and previously unappreciated step during the natural process that finds flaws in mRNAs, said Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics at University of Rochester Medical Center, director of the University of Rochester Center for RNA Biology and lead author of the Cell piece. This work has important implications for our understanding of how one of the human cell's most important activities, protein synthesis, undergoes quality control.
March 1, 2008

Graduate Women in Science Offers Pragmatic Thinking about Future Careers

Once a month, women graduate students, postdocs, and early-career faculty come together to listen to straightforward advice from accomplished scholars about important steps and critical practices to build a successful academic career. The monthly format provides regular opportunities for women in science to communicate with one another and establish relationships with peers.

The driving force behind the program is its coordinator, Lynne Maquat, Ph.D., J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Maquat offers this important advice to future faculty members: Do things despite your fears; build a strong curriculum vita—because it is always about merit; know yourself and what your strengths are; and be pragmatic about your career—know what you want to accomplish in the next six months, twelve months, and five years and then stick to your plan.
December 1, 2006

Four Rochester Professors Named Fellows of American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest federation of scientists, has elected four scientists from the University of Rochester as fellows. John Jaenike, Michael K. Tanenhaus, Lynne E. Maquat, and Henry A. Kautz were honored for the advances they've brought to their respective fields. The new fellows will be presented with a certificate at the Fellows Forum during the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco on Feb. 17, 2007.

Maquat, the Dean's Endowed Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, was nominated for discovery and characterization of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. Most recently her work has focused on how human cells protect themselves from constant and potentially destructive changes in gene expression through an RNA-mediated mechanism.
November 9, 2006

Drug Makes Cells Ignore Mutation

A drug that corrects the effects of a genetic mutation has produced encouraging results in tests on patients. The drug, PTC124, is designed to fool a patient's cells into producing a functional protein, even though that protein's gene is mutated.
Lynne Maquat, an RNA researcher at the University of Rochester, says more research is needed. But she adds that there is a real need for drugs of this sort. An antibiotic called gentamycin also causes cells to ignore mutations, but it can cause deafness and kidney failure.
June 1, 2006

Holly Kuzmiak Receives GWIS Travel and Conference Award

Holly Kuzmiak, a 2^nd year graduate student in Dr. Lynne Maquat's lab received a travel and conference award from GWIS. She attended and presented a plenary session talk at the annual RNA Society Meeting in Seattle, Washington. View her Travel report followup.
June 1, 2006

Medical Center Researcher Named to Head RNA Society

Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., the Dean's Endowed Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has been elected president of the RNA Society. The Society was formed in 1993 to encourage the sharing of experimental results and emerging concepts in ribonucleic acid research.
April 28, 2006

Two Researchers Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Two researchers, one from the University of Rochester Medical Center and another from the University of Rochester River Campus, were named as new members of the 226^th class of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Lynne E. Maquat, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, received the honor along with Richard Aslin, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Maquat was honored for decades of work that has advanced the understanding of how human cells protect themselves from constant and potentially destructive changes in gene expression. According to a recent article published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the research is important because the protection itself can contribute to disease, and the ability to side-step it may lead to new treatments for hundreds of genetic disorders.
October 25, 2005

Study Provides Insight into Cellular Defenses Against Genetic Mutation

With their latest discovery, researchers have significantly advanced the understanding of how human cells protect themselves from constant and potentially destructive changes in gene expression. According to an article published in this month's Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the research is important because the protection itself can contribute to disease, and the ability to side-step it may lead to new treatments for hundreds of genetic disorders.
Our study is important because we have determined for the first time that the mRNA-binding protein CBP80 tells the NMD system which mRNAs to review for nonsense codons, according to Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Medical Center, and senior author of the Nature article.
February 4, 2005

Search and Destroy: Rochester Scientists Discover New Mechanism of Regulating RNA Degradation

As any dedicated video game player knows, the first requirement for using a weapon or tool is finding it. And it is no different for cell biologists and clinicians who want to take control of gene expression in cells to create therapies to treat disease. While cells have a variety of ways to control gene expression, the trick for players in this game is to recognize them amidst the incredibly complex background of cellular machinery.
Now, in a paper in the January 28th issue of Cell, Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and her team, have identified a novel pathway for RNA degradation, a form of regulation that has garnered significant attention in recent years, and one that has the potential to produce a new set of tools for physicians to use to fight disease.
October 16, 2002

Scientist Honored for Research Contributions at Wilmot Cancer Center

A scientist who studies cellular mistakes was recently honored by the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, received the 2002 Davey Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to cancer research.
Maquat was honored for her research into nonsense – flawed molecular coding that results in abnormally shortened proteins and could cause harm. The flaw is oftentimes a mistake in the genetic material, DNA, or its product, RNA, which encodes instructions for making proteins. Mistakes happen routinely and are also at the root of a large percentage of diseases, including cancer.