Faculty
Research Interest: LncRNA control of heart development and disease; Discovery and function of micropeptides encoded by putative lncRNAs; Genome-editing by RNA-guided nucleases.
Research Interest: Regulation of pre-mRNA splicing and polyadenylation in healthy and diseased states; the contribution of RNA processing to cancer biology; effects of small molecule drugs on RNA processing and gene expression.
Research Interest: Regulation of Gene Expression by Targeted Degradation of RNA
Research Interest: Antimicrobial drug discovery using pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus and Acinetobacter baumannii: exploiting components of the bacterial RNA metabolism machinery; characterizing prokaryotic ribonucleases; understanding the impact of the host environment on antibiotic resistance and virulence factor expression.
Research Interest: Structural dynamics of the ribosome and ribosomal ligands during proteins synthesis, regulation of protein synthesis by mRNA structure in normal and diseased cells, and mechanisms of antibiotic action.
Research Interest: Nucleic acid modification and repair mechanisms linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, mitochondrial diseases, and cancer.
Research Interest: Role of the genetic code in regulating protein synthesis and mRNA metabolism in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Research Interest: Crystallography of RNA and Protein-RNA complexes
Research Interest: Splicing defects in hematologic malignancies; roles of human pre-mRNA splicing factors in HIV-1 infectivity; development of engineered splicing factors for correction of splicing defects; splice sites and their associated proteins as therapeutic targets.
Research Interest: Epigenetic inheritance, small silencing non-coding RNAs, translational control, lead toxicity, and comparative genomics.
Research Interest: Determining the therapeutic promise of engineered tRNAs for treatment of nonsense associated diseases and investigating the pathomechanisms of skeletal muscle weakness and wasting in myotonic dystrophy
Research Interest: RNA metabolism in human cells (nonsense-mediated mRNA decay/mRNA surveillance); influence of pre-mRNA splicing on mRNA translation; Staufen-mediated mRNA decay and Staufen-regulated RNA metabolism; post-transcriptional gene control via lncRNAs and SINEs; miRNA metabolism; Fragile X Mental Retardation Syndrome/Autism; therapeutics of nonsense diseases.
Research Interest: Computational biology of RNA, including structure prediction, molecular dynamics, and genomics.
Research Interest: Understanding how nuclear proteins and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) regulate gene transcription in pancreatic preneoplastic lesions, gaining knowledge of the process of cellular transformation and tumor initiation.
Research Interest: Biochemical mechanisms of RNA-mediated gene regulation; RNA-targeting CRISPR tool development
Research Interest: tRNA biogenesis, function and quality control; intellectual disability due to deficiencies in tRNA modifications.
Research Interest: Dr. Sakano specializes Otology and Neurotology, treating the disorders of the ear and lateral skull base. She also has a research interest in the activity dependent changes of the auditory neural pathways.
Research Interest: Computational biology of RNA; RNA comparative sequence analysis; RNA structure prediction; analysis of HIV RNA genomes.
Research Interest: Myotonic dystrophy, repeat expansion diseases, and therapeutic development for neuromuscular disorders.
Research Interest: Mechanism and physiological importance of alternative polyadenylation; Integrator Complex and transcriptional control, development and application of next-generation sequencing technologies
Research Interest: Structure and function analysis of gene regulation by non-protein-coding (nc)RNAs as a basis for therapeutic development.
Research Interest: Pathophysiological function and molecular mechanism of new non-coding RNAs (and RBPs) and new modes of gene regulation in cardiac system and cardiovascular disease.
Research Interest: RNA modification; pre-mRNA splicing; snRNP biogenesis; telomerase RNA modification and aging; nonsense-disease therapeutics.