Yousuf Khan
Stanford University, CA·Biophysics
RNA is far more than a messenger between DNA and protein. It folds into three-dimensional shapes that help control viruses, gene expression and cell machinery.
- Fields
Biophysics
Biochemistry
Computer Science
- Topics
RNA structure
RNA folding
structure prediction
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Assemble RNAmass, a large RNA sequence database including viral and non-coding RNAs. Use it to train RNA-FLM1, a foundation language model, first on all sequences and then on evolutionarily conserved ones.
- Develop 3DFoldRNA, a deep learning tool inspired by protein structure predictors that predicts RNA three-dimensional structure directly from sequence.
- Test whether highly conserved viral RNA elements adopt stable, distinct 3D shapes by solving their structures with cryo-electron microscopy.
- Use cryo-electron tomography to image RNA elements that drive programmed ribosomal frameshifting inside cells. The goal is to capture how they interact with ribosomes and change shape while working.
More about the research
Yet scientists can predict RNA shapes far less well than protein shapes, and few RNA structures have been solved. This project tackles the RNA structure problem from three angles: computational prediction, laboratory structure determination, and imaging RNA inside cells.
Why it matters
RNA viruses and RNA-linked diseases harm millions of people each year. Knowing the key structural elements in viral RNA could reveal new antiviral drug targets. Understanding RNA folding could also help make mRNA vaccines and other RNA-based therapies more stable and effective.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Willy Wriggers
Old Dominion University, VA·Biophysics
Develop measures of how well an atomic model fits local regions of a cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) density map, and rate maps against reliable reference structures.
Salim Sazzed
Georgia Southern University, GA·Computer Science
Characterize the structural inconsistencies and variability of protein secondary structures, such as helices and sheets, in medium-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) maps.
Matthieu Gagnon
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX·Biochemistry
Determine how release factor 3 (RF3) releases protein chains from ribosomes that have made errors and helps protein folding during synthesis, using cryo-EM structures of bacterial 70S ribosome complexes.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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