Cell Death & Disease: Global profiling reveals common and distinct N6-methyladenosine (m6A) regulation of innate immune responses during bacterial and viral infections (Lai & Chen Labs)

March 15, 2022

 Jian Feng, Teng Zhang, Océane Sorel, Wen Meng, Xinquan Zhang, Zhao Lai, Weiming Yuan, Yidong Chen, Yufei Huang & Shou-Jiang Gao Abstract N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a dynamic post-transcriptional RNA modification influencing all aspects of mRNA biology. While m6A modifications during numerous viral infections have been described, the role of m6A in innate immune response remains unclear. [...]

eLife: Signature-scoring methods developed for bulk samples are not adequate for cancer single-cell RNA sequencing data (Zheng, Chen, & Wang Labs)

March 7, 2022

 Nighat Noureen,  Zhenqing Ye,  Yidong Chen,  Xiaojing Wang,  Siyuan Zheng  Abstract Quantifying the activity of gene expression signatures is common in analyses of single-cell RNA sequencing data. Methods originally developed for bulk samples are often used for this purpose without accounting for contextual differences between bulk and single-cell data. More broadly, these methods have not [...]

Angelina Vaseva, PhD to Receive NCI Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT)(R37) Award.

March 2, 2022

 Angelina Vaseva, PhDAssistant Professor,Department of Molecular Medicine,Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute Congratulations to Dr. Vaseva on being awarded an NCI Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT)(R37) Award. NCI R37 award provides longer-term grant support to Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) that receive outstanding R01 grant scores. Eligible investigators may obtain up to seven years of [...]

Non-Coding RNA, FibroDB: Expression Analysis of Protein-Coding and Long Non-Coding RNA Genes in Fibrosis (Bishop Lab)

February 25, 2022

 by Mirolyuba Ilieva 1ORCID,Henry E. Miller 2,3,4ORCID,Arav Agarwal 4,5,Gabriela K. Paulus 4,6,Jens Hedelund Madsen 1,Alexander J. R. Bishop 2,3,7ORCID,Sakari Kauppinen 1 and Shizuka Uchida 1,*ORCID Abstract Most long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are expressed at lower levels than protein-coding genes and their expression is often restricted to specific cell types, certain time points during development, and [...]

Cancers: Global Genomic and Proteomic Analysis Identified Critical Pathways Modulated by Proto-Oncogene PELP1 in TNBC (Chen & Lai)

February 25, 2022

 by Zexuan Liu 1,2,†,Kristin A. Altwegg 1,3,†ORCID,Junhao Liu 1,2,Susan T. Weintraub 4,Yidong Chen 5,6,Zhao Lai 5,7,Gangadhara R. Sareddy 1,3,Suryavathi Viswanadhapalli 1,3,*ORCID and Ratna K. Vadlamudi 1,3,8,* Simple Summary The proto-oncogene PELP1 is commonly overexpressed in many cancers including triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). In this study, we utilized global proteomic and RNA-seq approaches to elucidate the [...]

Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology: Extrarenal Anaplastic Wilms Tumor A Case Report With Genomic Analysis And Tumor Models (Kurmasheva & Houghton)

February 8, 2022

 Willis, Kelsi R. MS*; Sathe, Adwait A. PhD†; Xing, Chao PhD†,‡,§; Koduru, Prasad PhD*; Artunduaga, Maddy MD∥,¶; Butler, Erin B. MD#; Park, Jason Y. MD, PhD*,¶; Kurmasheva, Raushan T. PhD**,††; Houghton, Peter J. PhD**,††; Chen, Kenneth S. MD¶,#; Rakheja, Dinesh MD*,¶ Abstract Primary extrarenal Wilms tumors are rare neoplasms that are presumed to arise from [...]

Brain, Behavior, & Immunity: Sex-dependent pain trajectories induced by prolactin require an inflammatory response for pain resolution (Lai Lab)

January 24, 2022

 Author links open overlay panelJenniferMecklenburga  AndiWangzhouf  Anahit H.Hovhannisyana  PriscillaBarba-Escobedoa  Sergey A.Sheinb  YiZoud  KorriWeldond  ZhaoLaideVincentGoffing  GregoryDussorf  Alexei V.Tumanovb  Theodore J.Pricef  Armen N.Akopianac   Highlights: • Prolactin treatment generates sex differences in pain trajectories in mice. • Low-dose prolactin treatment causes a non-resolving pain phenotype in females. • Pain resolution is preceded by pro-inflammatory CD11b+/CD64+ cell responses. • [...]

eLife: RNA binding to human METTL3-METTL14 restricts N6-deoxyadenosine methylation of DNA in vitro (Gupta Lab)

January 21, 2022

 Shan Qi,  Javier Mota,  Siu-Hong Chan,  Johanna Villarreal,  Nan Dai,  Shailee Arya,  Robert A Hromas,  Manjeet K Rao,  Ivan R Corrêa Jr  Yogesh K Gupta  Abstract Methyltransferase like-3 (METTL3) and METTL14 complex transfer a methyl group from S-adenosyl-L-methionine to N6 amino group of adenosine bases in RNA (m6A) and DNA (m6dA). Emerging evidence highlights the role of [...]

Frontiers in Microbiology: Robust Heat Shock Response in Chlamydia Lacking a Typical Heat Shock Sigma Factor (Lai Lab)

January 20, 2022

 Yehong Huang1,2†, Wurihan Wurihan2†, Bin Lu1,2†, Yi Zou3, Yuxuan Wang2†, Korri Weldon3, Joseph D. Fondell2†, Zhao Lai3,4, Xiang Wu1*†, and Huizhou Fan2*† Cells reprogram their transcriptome in response to stress, such as heat shock. In free-living bacteria, the transcriptomic reprogramming is mediated by increased DNA-binding activity of heat shock sigma factors and activation of genes normally repressed [...]