2019 News
December 23, 2019 - New from the Zamore Lab - Evolutionarily conserved pachytene piRNA loci are highly divergent among modern humans. Özata DM, Yu T, Mou H, Gainetdinov I, Colpan C, Cecchini K, Yasin Kaymaz Y, Wu PH, Fan K, Kucukural A, Weng Z & Zamore PD. Nat Ecol Evol4, 156–168 (2020) doi:10.1038/s41559-019-1065-1
December 17, 2019 - New from the Mello Lab - GCNA Interacts with Spartan and Topoisomerase II to Regulate Genome Stability. Dokshin GA, Davis GM, Sawle AD, Eldridge MD, Nicholls PK, Gourley TE, Romer KA, Molesworth LW, Tatnell HR, Ozturk AR, de Rooij DG, Hannon GJ, Page DC, Mello CC, Carmell MA. Dev Cell. 2019 Dec 4. pii: S1534-5807(19)30937-2. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2019.11.006. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 31839538
November 14, 2019 - Congratulations to Anastasia Khvorova, PhD for being awarded the Rett Syndrome Trust Award for the MECP2 Duplication Syndrome project.
November 13, 2019 - Congratulations to Bruno Godinho, PhD from the Khvorova Lab, for winning the STATnews.com Wunderkinds award.
October 28, 2019 - State-of-the-art UMass Chan Cryo Electron Microscopy Core Facility growing, expanding its reach. New equipment and more educational support broader vision for advancing biomedical research.
October 28, 2019 - Congratulations to Bruno Godinho, PhD from the Khvorova Lab, for winning the 2019 Dr. Alan M. Gerwitz Memorial Scholarship for his contribution to the field of oligonucleotide therapeutics awarded by OTS.
October 24, 2019 - New from the Sontheimer Lab. Structures of Neisseria meningitidis Cas9 Complexes in Catalytically Poised and Anti-CRISPR-Inhibited States. Wei Sun; Jing Yang; Zhi Cheng; Nadia Amrani; Chao Liu; Kangkang Wang; Raed Ibraheim; Alireza Edraki; Xue Huang; Min Wang; Jiuyu Wang; Liang Liu; Gang Sheng; Yanhua Yang; Jizhong Lou; Erik J. Sontheimer; Yanli Wang. doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2019.09.025
October 16, 2019 – New from the Khvorova Lab. Loss of huntingtin function slows synaptic vesicle endocytosis in striatal neurons from the htt Q140/Q140 mouse model of Huntington's disease. McAdam RL, Morton A, Gordon SL, Alterman JF, Khvorova A, Cousin MA, Smillie KJ. Neurobiol Dis. 2019 Oct 12:104637. doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2019.104637. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 31614197 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
September 12, 2019, New publication from the Korostelev lab. Extensive ribosome and RF2 rearrangements during translation termination. Egor Svidritskiy, Gabriel Demo, Anna B Loveland, Chen Xu, Andrei A Korostelev. eLife 2019;8:e46850 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.46850
September 10, 2019, Congratulations to Dr. Anna Loveland, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Korostelev’s lab - she is the RNA Society member highlighted in the September 2019 Member Spotlight. Written by Spotlight team member Nandini Kundu, this month’s piece describes how early childhood experiences fueled Anna's scientific curiosity and what inspired her to study ribosome dynamics with cryo-electron microscopy.
August, 2019 - Congratulations to the Khvorova lab - New publication chosen as the August OTS Paper of the Month. A divalent siRNA chemical scaffold for potent and sustained modulation of gene expression throughout the central nervous system Alterman JF, Godinho BMDC, Hassler MR, Ferguson CM, Echeverria D, Sapp E, Haraszti RA, Coles AH, Conroy F, Miller R, Roux L, Yan P, Knox EG, Turanov AA, King RM, Gernoux G, Mueller C, Gray-Edwards HL, Moser RP, Bishop NC, Jaber SM, Gounis MJ, Sena-Esteves M, Pai AA, DiFiglia M, Aronin N, Khvorova A. Nat Biotechnol. 2019 Aug;37(8):884-894. doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0205-0. Epub 2019 Aug 2.
August 22, 2019, New publication from the Sontheimer lab. Tissue-restricted Genome Editing in vivo Specified by MicroRNA-repressible Anti-CRISPR Proteins. Lee J, Mou H, Ibraheim R, Liang SQ, Liu P, Xue W, Sontheimer EJ. RNA. 2019 Aug 22. pii: rna.071704.119. doi: 10.1261/rna.071704.119. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 31439808 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
August 19, 2019, Congratulations to Zack Kennedy. "For ALS medical scientist, finding a cure is personal". Farragher, Thomas (2019) Boston Globe, 19 August 2019.
August 19, 2019, New publication from the Grunwald lab. Live-Cell Imaging of mRNP-NPC Interactions in Budding Yeast. Lari A, Farzam F, Bensidoun P, Oeffinger M, Zenklusen D, Grunwald D, Montpetit B. Methods Mol Biol. 2019;2038:131-150. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9674-2_9. PMID: 31407282 [PubMed - in process]
August 2, 2019, New publication from the Khvorova lab. A divalent siRNA chemical scaffold for potent and sustained modulation of gene expression throughout the central nervous system. Alterman JF, Godinho BMDC, Hassler MR, Ferguson CM, Echeverria D, Sapp E, Haraszti RA, Coles AH, Conroy F, Miller R, Roux L, Yan P, Knox EG, Turanov AA, King RM, Gernoux G, Mueller C, Gray-Edwards HL, Moser RP, Bishop NC, Jaber SM, Gounis MJ, Sena-Esteves M, Pai AA, DiFiglia M, Aronin N, Khvorova A. Nat Biotechnol. 2019 Aug;37(8):884-894. doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0205-0. Epub 2019 Aug 2. PMID: 31375812
July 25, 2019, Congratulations to Dr. Athma Pai for the Pai lab’s first grant awarded at UMass Chan Medical School, an R35 Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) from NIGMS, entitled “Tracking transcriptome diversity in real-time”!
July 3, 2019, New publication from the Zamore lab. High-Throughput Analysis Reveals Rules for Target RNA Binding and Cleavage by AGO2. Becker WR, Ober-Reynolds B, Jouravleva J, Jolly SM, Zamore PD, Greenleaf WJ. Mol Cell. 2019 Jul 3. pii: S1097-2765(19)30445-9. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2019.06.012. [Epub ahead of print]PMID: 31324449
June 21, 2019, New publication from the Sontheimer lab. X-Tracking a New CRISPR-Cas Genome-Editing Platform from Metagenomic Data Sets. Sontheimer EJ.CRISPR J. 2019 Jun;2:148-150. doi: 10.1089/crispr.2019.29061.ejs. No abstract available. PMID:31225753
June 12, 2019, New publication from the Xue lab. The depletion of TRRAP induces p53‐independent senescence in liver cancer by downregulating mitotic genes. Suet‐Yan Kwan, Ankur Sheel, Chun‐Qing Song, Xiao‐Ou Zhang, Tingting Jiang, Hien Dang, Yueying Cao, Deniz M. Ozata, Haiwei Mou, Hao Yin, Zhiping Weng, Xin Wei Wang, Wen Xue. AASLD 2019 June 12 doi: 10.1002/hep.30807
May 11, 2019, New publication from the Zamore lab. The RNA-Binding ATPase, Armitage, Couples piRNA Amplification in Nuage to Phased piRNA Production on Mitochondria. Ge DT, Wang W, Tipping C, Gainetdinov I, Weng Z, Zamore PD. Mol Cell. 2019 Apr 26. pii: S1097-2765(19)30276-X. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2019.04.006. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 31076285
May 8, 2019, New pre-print publication from the Sontheimer and Xue labs. Tissue-specific Genome Editing in vivo by MicroRNA-repressible Anti-CRISPR Proteins. Lee J, Mou H, Ibraheim R, Liang SQ, Xue W, Sontheimer EJ. BioRxiv. May 8, 2019. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/631689
April 29, 2019, New publication from Khvorova, Watts & Brown labs. Nucleic Acid Therapeutics for Neurological Diseases. Watts JK, Brown RH, Khvorova A. Neurotherapeutics. 2019 Apr 29. doi: 10.1007/s13311-019-00736-1.
April 16, 2019, New publication from the Xue lab. CRISPR-SONIC: targeted somatic oncogene knock-in enables rapid in vivo cancer modeling. Mou† H, Ozata† DM, Smith† JL, Sheel A, Kwan SY, Hough S, Kucukural A, Zachary Kennedy Z, Cao Y and Xue W. Genome Medicine 2019 11:21
Press coverage:
April 1, 2019 New protocols from the Zamore lab:
RNA Interference and Small RNA Analysis. Li C, Zamore PD. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Apr 1;2019(4).
RNAi in Drosophila S2 Cells by siRNA Duplex or dsRNA Transfection. Li C, Zamore PD. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Apr 1;2019(4).
RNAi in Mammalian Cells by siRNA Duplex Transfection. Li C, Zamore PD.Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Apr 1;2019(4).
Preparation of siRNA Duplexes. Li C, Zamore PD. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Apr 1;2019(4).
RNAi in Drosophila S2 Cells by dsRNA Soaking. Li C, Zamore PD. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Mar 1;2019(3)
Preparation of dsRNAs for RNAi by In Vitro Transcription. Li C, Zamore PD. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. 2019 Mar 1;2019(3)
March 7, 2019 Congratulations, Alireza Edraki (Sontheimer lab) for receiving an F31 Fellowship!!
March 1, 2019 Congratulations, Jordan Smith (Xue lab) for receiving an NCI F30 fellowship!!
February 25, 2019, New publication from the Xue lab. Adenine base editing in an adult mouse model of tyrosinemia. Chun-Qing Song, Tingting Jiang, Michelle Richter, Luke H. Rhym, Luke W. Koblan, Maria Paz Zafra, Emma M. Schatoff, Jordan L. Doman, Yueying Cao, Lukas E. Dow, Lihua Julie Zhu, Daniel G Anderson, David R. Liu, Hao Yin & Wen Xue. Nature BME. 25 February 2019
February 12, 2019, New publication from the Watts lab. Next-Generation Peptide Nucleic Acid Chimeras Exhibit High Affinity and Potent Gene Silencing. Debacker AJ, Sharma VK, Meda Krishnamurthy P, O'Reilly D, Greenhill R, Watts JK. Biochemistry. 2019 Feb 12;58(6):582-589. doi: 10.1021/acs.biochem.8b00827. Epub 2018 Dec 18. PMID: 30520300
February 12, 2019, New book chapter from the Khvorova lab. Conjugate-mediated Delivery of RNAi-based Therapeutics: Enhancing Pharmacokinetics–Pharmacodynamics Relationships of Medicinal Oligonucleotides. Godinho BMDC, Coles AH, and Khvorova K. Chapter 10. Advances in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. 2019 Feb 11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/9781788015714
February 6, 2019, Rett Syndrome Research Trust provides $2.7 million in new funding for research to Jonathan Watts and colleagues working to develop a therapy to fix faulty gene in Rett syndrome
January 21, 2019, New publication from the Xue lab. CRISPR–Cas: a tool for cancer research and therapeutics. Yin H, Xue W, Anderson DG. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2019 Jan 21. doi: 10.1038/s41571-019-0166-8. [Epub ahead of print] Review. PMID: 30664678
January 17, 2019, New publication from the Zamore and Grunwald labs. An automated Bayesian pipeline for rapid analysis of single-molecule binding data. Smith CS, Jouravleva K, Huisman M, Jolly SM, Zamore PD, Grunwald D. Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 17;10(1):272. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-08045-5. PMID: 30655518