Seyhan N. Ege Assistant Professor of Chemistry
she/her/hers
About
Education/Degrees:
PostDoc Howard Hughes Institute of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Dept of Molecular Biology and Genetics) Ph.D. University of Michigan (Dept of Chemistry), B.S. University of Colorado at Denver (Dept of Chemistry)
Post-transcriptional control of mRNA expression
The ribosome is the molecular machine responsible for translating mRNA into protein. mRNAs are post-transcriptionally modified and presumably their stability and translatability are affected by these modifications, akin to the post-translational modification (e.g. acetylation, phosphorylation) of proteins. There is emerging evidence suggesting that RNA modifications contribute to a wide variety of diseases including cancer, obesity, heart disease, depression and diabetes. Work in our lab seeks to unlock the ‘RNA epigenetic code’ by uncovering how post-transcriptional modifications alter mRNA structure, translation, and stability, and identifying how the ribonucleoprotein content of different mRNAs is controlled by their modification status.
We take a integrated approach, combining the power of mechanistic enzymology, biophysical chemistry, cell-based studies, and genome-wide (ribosome profiling) techniques to investigate the molecular level mechanisms of events that occur when mRNAs are modified. The breadth of techniques used in our lab uniquely positions us to understand how alterations in translation and translation regulation impact disease.
Representative lab publications
Jones JD, Monroe J, Koutmou KS. “A molecular level perspective on the frequency, distribution and possible cellular roles of mRNA modifications.” WIREs RNA (2020), PMID 31960607
Eyler DE, Franco MK, Batool Z, Wu MZ, Dubuke ML, Dobosz-Bartoszek M, Jones JD, Polikanov YS, Roy B, Koutmou KS. “Pseudouridinylation of mRNA coding sequences alters translation.” PNAS (2020), PMID 31672910
M Tardu, Jones JD, Kennedy RT, Q Lin, KS Koutmou. “Identification and quantification of modified nucleosides in Saccharomyces cerevisiae mRNAs.” ACS Chemical Biology (2019), PMID 31243956
