University of Gothenburg
Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Decoding Gene Regulation Through small RNAs
We explore how RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and RNA interference (RNAi) shape gene regulation at the molecular level. Our research aims to uncover fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and develop innovative tools to target disease-driving genes.
Our Research.
RNA interference
We investigate how small RNAs guide gene silencing, uncovering novel RNAi mechanisms that can be harnessed for targeted gene regulation and potential therapeutic applications.
Gene Regulation
Our research explores how RNA molecules control gene expression, with a focus on transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation in normal and disease states.
RNA-Binding Proteins
We study RBPs and their role in RNA metabolism, including their impact on mRNA stability, splicing, and translation, to better understand their function in health and disease.
Method Development
We develop and refine cutting-edge techniques, such as APEX proximity labeling, to map RNA-protein interactions with high spatial and temporal resolution.
Our team.
Aishe A. Sarshad
Principal Investigator
Aishe is an Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg and the Institute of Biomedicine. Before this, she spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Markus Hafner (NIAMS, NIH) and received her PhD from the Karolinska Institute in 2014 with Piergiorgio Percipalle (CMB).
Evgeniia Shcherbinina
Postdoc
Evgeniia joined the lab in August 2023 as a shared postdoc with AstraZeneca. She received her Ph.D. degree in Life Sciences from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech).
Kuerbannisha Amahong
Postdoc
Kuerbannisha joined the lab in December 2024. She earned her PhD from Zhejiang University in 2024. Her doctoral research focused on RNA virus-host interactions, aiming to identify novel targets for antiviral drug development.
Hang Huynh
PhD student
Hang (goes by Finn) joined the lab in January 2022. Hang received a Master's degree in 2021 from the University of Tsukuba in Japan where he focused on the role of Fibulin-4 in the maintenance of endothelial function and its relationship to thoracic aortic aneurysms.
Michelle Fong
Lab tech
Michelle joined the lab in jan 2024 as a Master thesis student, exploring the mode of action of AGO2:siRNA complex in human cancer cells. She is currently working in the lab as a lab tech.
Allumni.
Iwona Nowak, Postdoc, Nov 2020 - Dec 2024
Hsiang-Chi Huang, Postdoc, Jul 2021 - Aug 2004, Now Assistant Professor at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)
Vivian Lobo, Postdoc, Jan 2020 - Dec 2023, Now postdoc at University of Bonn
Geng Wenchao, MSc thesis student
Ana Pereira, MSc thesis student
Reyhaneh Rezaei, MSc thesis student
Carola Fernandez, Postdoc, Now Senior Scientist at Astra Zeneca
Esther Güse, Erasmus project student, Now PhD student in Germany
Melis Kanik, Erasmus project student, Now PhD student in Belgium
Ulrika Alexandersson, Lab manager, Now with Maria Falkenberg at UGOT
Axel Niklasson, BSc thesis student, Now doing his Masters in Science
Isra Hassan Hamzo, BMA thesis student, Now working at Östra hospital as a certified BMA
Wail Chrifi, Lab technician
Our Publications.
Hsiang-Chi Huang, Iwona Nowak, Vivian Lobo, Danica F Besavilla, Karin Schön, Jakub O Westholm, Carola Fernandez, Angana AH Patel, Clotilde Wiel, Volkan I Sayin, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Davide Angeletti, Aishe A Sarshad#. Nuclear RNAi modulates Influenza A virus infectivity by downregulating type-I Interferon response. BioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.07.583365
Vivian Lobo*, Iwona Nowak*, Carola Fernandez, Ana Iris Correa Muler, Jakub O Westholm, Hsiang-Chi Huang, Ivo Fabrik, Hang T Huynh, Evgeniia Shcherbinina, Melis Poyraz, Anetta Härtlova, Daniel Benhalevy, Davide Angeletti, Aishe A Sarshad#, Loss of Lamin A leads to the nuclear translocation of AGO2 and compromised RNA interference, Nucleic Acids Research, 2024;, gkae589, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae589. PMID: 38994560.
Miriam Cipullo, Genís Valentín Gesé, Shreekara Gopalakrishna, Annika Krueger, Vivian Lobo, Maria A Pirozhkova, James Marks, Petra Páleníková, Dmitrii Shiriaev, Yong Liu, Jelena Misic, Yu Cai, Minh Duc Nguyen, Abubakar Abdelbagi, Xinping Li, Michal Minczuk, Markus Hafner, Daniel Benhalevy, Aishe A Sarshad, Ilian Atanassov, B Martin Hällberg, Joanna Rorbach. GTPBP8 plays a role in mitoribosome formation in human mitochondria. Nature Communication 15, 5664 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50011-x. PMID: 38969660
Vivian Lobo*, Evgeniia Shcherbinina*, Jakub O Westholm, Iwona Nowak, Hsiang-Chi Huang, Davide Angeletti, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Aishe A Sarshad. Integrative transcriptomic and proteomic profiling of the effects of cell confluency on gene expression. Scientific Data 11, 617 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03465-z. PMID: 38866801
Hang T Huynh*, Evgeniia Shcherbinina*, Hsiang‐Chi Huang, Reyhaneh Rezaei, Aishe A Sarshad. Biochemical Separation of Cytoplasmic and Nuclear Fraction for Downstream Molecular Analysis. Current Protocols. 2024 May;4(5):e1042. doi: 10.1002/cpz1.1042. PMID: 38767195.
Iwona Nowak and Aishe A Sarshad. Argonaute proteins take center stage in cancers. Cancers 2021, 13(4), 788; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13040788. PMID: 33668654
Stephan P Rosshart#, Jasmin Herz, Brian G Vassallo, Ashli Hunter, Morgan K Wall, Jonathan H Badger, John A McCulloch, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Aishe A Sarshad, Irina Leonardi, Nicholas Collins, Joshua A Blatter, Seong-Ji Han, Samira Tamoutounour, Svetlana Potapova, Mark B Foster St. Claire, Wuxing Yuan, Shurjo K Sen, Matthew S Dreier, Benedikt Hild, Markus Hafner, David Wang, Iliyan D Iliev, Yasmine Belkaid, Giorgio Trinchieri, Barbara Rehermann# A natural microbiota-based mouse model with increased translational research value for immune diseases. Science. 2019 Aug 2;365(6452):eaaw4361. doi: 10.1126/science.aaw4361. PMID: 31371577
Bruna Rodrigues Muys, Josane F Sousa, Jessica Rodrigues Plaça, Luíza Ferreira de Araújo, Aishe A Sarshad, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Xiantao Wang, Xiao Ling Li, Greice Andreotti de Molfetta, Anelisa Ramao, Ashish Lal, Daniel Onofre Vidal, Markus Hafner, Wilson A Silva. miR-450a acts as a tumor suppressor in ovarian cancer by regulating energy metabolism. Cancer Research. 2019 Jul 1;79(13):3294-3305. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-19-0490. PMID: 31101765
Quan Q Gao, William E Putzbach, Andrea E Murmann, Siquan Chen, Aishe A Sarshad, Johannes M Peter, Elizabeth T Bartom, Markus Hafner, Marcus E Peter. 6mer seed toxicity in tumor suppressive microRNAs. Nature communications vol. 9,1 4504. 29 Oct. 2018, doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06526-1. PMID: 30374110
Will Putzbach*, Ashley Haluck-Kangas*, Quan Q Gao, Aishe A Sarshad, Elizabeth T Bartom, Austin Stults, Abdul S Qadir, Markus Hafner, Marcus E Peter. CD95L mRNA is toxic to cells. Elife. 2018 Oct 16;7:e38621. doi: 10.7554/eLife.38621. PMID: 30324908
Aishe A Sarshad, Aster H Juan, Ana Iris Correa Muler, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Xiantao Wang, Pavol Genzor, Xuesong Feng, Pei-Fang Tsai, Hong-Wei Sun, Astrid D Haase, Vittorio Sartorelli, Markus Hafner. Argonaute-miRNA complexes silence target mRNAs in the nucleus of mammalian stem cells. Molecular Cell.2018 Sep 20;71(6):1040-1050.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2018.07.020. PMID: 30146314
Pei-Fang Tsai, Stefania Dell’Orso, Joseph Rodriguez, Karinna O Vivanco, Kyung-Dae Ko, Kan Jiang, Aster H Juan, Aishe A Sarshad, Laura Vian, Michelle Tran, Darawalee Wangsa, A Hongjun Wang, Jelena Perovanovic, Dimitrios Anastasakis, Evelyn Ralston, Thomas Ried, Hong-Wei Sun, Markus Hafner, Daniel R Larson, Vittorio Sartorelli. A Muscle Super-Enhancer RNA Mediates Cohesin Recruitment and Regulates Transcription in Trans. Molecular Cell. 2018 Jul 5;71(1):129-141.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2018.06.008. PMID: 29979962
Daniel Benhalevy*, Hannah L McFarland*, Aishe A Sarshad*, Markus Hafner. PAR-CLIP and streamlined small RNA cDNA library preparation protocol for the identification of RNA binding protein target sites. Methods. 2017 Apr 15;118-119:41-49. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2016.11.009. PMID: 27871973
William Putzbach, Quan Q Gao, Monal Patel, Stijn Van Dongen, Ashley Haluck-Kangas, Aishe A Sarshad, Elizabeth T Bartom, Kwang-Youn A Kim, Denise M Scholtens, Markus Hafner, Jonathan C Zhao, Andrea E Murmann, Marcus E Peter. Many si/shRNAs can kill cancer cells by targeting multiple survival genes through an off-target mechanism. Elife. 2017 Oct 24;6:e29702. doi: 10.7554/eLife.29702. PMID: 29063830.
Randall A Dass, Aishe A Sarshad, Brittany B Carson, Jennifer M Feenstra, Amanpreet Kaur, Ales Obrdlik, Matthew M Parks, Varsha Prakash, Damon K Love, Kristian Pietras, Rosa Serra, Scott C Blanchard, Piergiorgio Percipalle, Anthony MC Brown, C Theresa Vincent. Wnt5a Signals through DVL1 to Repress Ribosomal DNA Transcription by RNA Polymerase I. PLoS Genetics. 2016 Aug 8;12(8):e1006217. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006217. PMID: 27500936.
Tara Dutka*, Aishe A Sarshad*, Markus Hafner. PAR-CLIP: A Genomic Technique to Dissect RNA-Protein Interactions. Field Guidelines for Genetic Experimental Designs in High-Throughput Sequencing (2016) pp 261-289. Doi 10.1007/978-3-319-31350-4
Bader Almuzzaini, Aishe A Sarshad, Aldwin S Rahmanto, Magnus L Hansson, Anne Von Euler, Olle Sangfelt, Neus Visa, Ann‐Kristin Östlund Farrants, Piergiorgio Percipalle. In β-actin knockouts, epigenetic reprogramming and rDNA transcription inactivation lead to growth and proliferation defects. FASEB Journal. 2016 Aug;30(8):2860-73. doi: 10.1096/fj.201600280R. PMID: 27127100.
Bader Almuzzaini, Aishe A Sarshad, Ann-Kristin Östlund Farrants, Piergiorgio Percipalle. Nuclear myosin 1 contributes to a chromatin landscape compatible with RNA polymerase II transcription activation. BMC Biol. 2015 Jun 5;13:35. doi: 10.1186/s12915-015-0147-z. PMID: 26044184
Aishe A Sarshad, Martin Corcoran, Bader Al-Muzzaini, Laura Borgonovo-Brandter, Anne Von Euler, Douglas Lamont, Neus Visa, Piergiorgio Percipalle. Glycogen synthase kinase (GSK) 3β phosphorylates and protects nuclear myosin 1c from proteasome-mediated degradation toactivate rDNA transcription in early G1 cells. PLoS Genetics. 2014 Jun 5;10(6):e1004390. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004390. PMID: 24901984.
Aishe A Sarshad and Piergiorgio Percipalle. New insight into role of myosin motors for activation of RNA polymerases. Int Rev Cell Mol Biol. 2014;311:183-230. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-800179-0.00004-0. PMID: 24952918.
Aishe Sarshad*, Fatemeh Sadeghifar*, Emilie Louvet*, Raffaele Mori, Stefanie Böhm, Bader Al-Muzzaini, Anna Vintermist, Nathalie Fomproix, Ann-Kristin Östlund, Piergiorgio Percipalle Nuclear Myosin 1c Facilitates the Chromatin Modifications Required to Activate rRNA Gene Transcription and Cell Cycle Progression. PLoS Genetics. 2013 Mar;9(3):e1003397. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003397. Epub 2013 Mar 21. PMID: 23555303.
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