Our research mission
The traditional central dogma of molecular biology is often described as: DNA → RNA → protein. But what’s the point of having RNA? It turns out that RNA is an important gene regulator. It helps cells decide when genes should be turned on or off, where gene activity should happen, and how strongly genes should be expressed. When this regulation goes wrong, eukaryotic cells can behave improperly, which can contribute to developmental problems, disease, or poor health.
A major question in biology is: how do RNAs help control genes? Our lab studies this question by asking how RNAs influence chromatin, the DNA-protein structure that packages genomes inside cells. Because chromatin affects gene expression, RNA-guided chromatin regulation is one way that RNAs can “loop back” to control gene expression.
We use the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a simple and powerful model system to discover how RNA-based chromatin regulation works. Many gene-regulatory mechanisms found in this yeast are also relevant to humans, so discoveries in S. pombe will help us build testable models for human biology.
Chromatin regulation by RNA-associated proteins
Broadly, RNAs come in two flavors based on size: small and long. In S. pombe, we recently discovered new RNA-associated proteins that enable small or long RNAs to modulate chromatin processes (e.g., histone modifications, transcription). We are now trying to uncover the underlying molecular mechanisms by which those proteins work.
Our previous work on this topic:
Building bio-synthetic models to study human proteins
We use yeast to model gene regulatory processes that could happen in humans because this bypasses the need to work with complicated animal systems. However, yeast has drawbacks, including the fact that we are technically not directly looking at human factors. To combine the versatility of yeast and the biology of humans, we are building new humanized yeast models to more directly go after functions of human factors.
Our previous work on this topic:
Our program is made possible by generous funding from:
Michigan State University
National Science Foundation (NSF)
MSU+HFH Partnership
