Jia Sheng
University at Albany, NY·Chemistry
RNA is far more than a messenger. Small chemical changes to its building blocks can switch its functions on or off.
- Fields
Chemistry
Biochemistry
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
RNA chemistry
nucleic acid chemistry
photoswitchable nucleotides
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Synthesize azobenzene-based photoswitchable nucleosides, which change shape under different wavelengths of light, insert them into RNA strands, and characterize base-pairing stability and structure using X-ray crystallography and computational modeling.
- Test whether light can switch the activity of modified RNA aptamers and ribozymes, and control RNA-enzyme recognition in reverse transcription and CRISPR-Cas13-mediated RNA cleavage.
- Synthesize and characterize nine wobble uridine modifications linked to the bacterial enzymes MnmE and MnmH, building on findings that s2U, ges2U and se2U pair with different specificity.
- Test whether environmental stress changes wobble uridine modification levels in E. coli tRNA to regulate translation of codon-biased stress-response transcripts.
- Develop MnmH-based clickable chemical tools to tag and visualize thiolated tRNAs in yeast and human cancer cells.
More about the research
Two projects use chemistry to study and control those changes. The first adds synthetic, light-responsive building blocks so researchers can turn RNA activity on and off with light. The second asks how natural chemical marks on bacterial transfer RNA (tRNA), the adapter molecules that read genetic code during protein synthesis, help cells respond to stress.
Why it matters
Light-controlled RNAs could give researchers a noninvasive way to switch gene regulation on or off. This could eventually support new RNA-based therapeutics, gene-engineering tools and biomaterials. The tRNA work adds understanding of how bacteria use RNA modifications to survive stress, including antibiotic exposure. It will also provide new tagging reagents for studying RNA modifications in yeast and human cancer cells.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Esteban Orellana Vinueza
Dartmouth College, NH·Biochemistry
Determine how chemical modifications alter the structure, dynamics and folding or misfolding of tRNA isodecoders, tRNAs that share an anticodon but differ elsewhere, using spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations.
James MacKay
Elizabethtown College, PA·Chemistry
Design and synthesize new PNA nucleobases that improve pi-pi stacking of the peptide nucleic acid strand within PNA-double-stranded RNA triple helices, strengthening binding.
Byron Purse
San Diego State University, CA·Chemistry
Create ASO and siRNA stand-ins carrying a pair of fluorescent ribonucleosides, one a steady reference and one pH-sensitive, to image cell uptake and measure escape from acidic endosomes in live cells.
The school
University at Albany: 15 labs on PI Pages, $472M a year on research, 144 research doctorates a year.
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