Sohail Khoshnevis
Emory University, GA·Biochemistry
Cells can change their shape and behavior without changing their DNA, an ability called cell plasticity. This ability matters in immune responses and cancer.
- Fields
Biochemistry
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
- Topics
cell plasticity
post-transcriptional regulation
translational control
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Define the composition and interacting partners of eIF3, a translation-starting protein complex, in different cell types of Candida albicans using biochemical assays and proteomics.
- Determine which mRNAs C. albicans eIF3 promotes or suppresses during the yeast-to-hyphae transition, using sequencing-based measures of translation.
- Identify how m6A methylation, a chemical tag on mRNA, is deposited during cell-type switching in C. albicans, using newly developed genetic tools and biochemical assays.
- Test how m6A mRNA modifications drive cell-type switching in C. albicans by combining genetic perturbation with next-generation sequencing.
More about the research
Much of what is known about plasticity focuses on which genes are switched on. Much less is known about control after a gene's message (mRNA) is made. This includes how mRNAs are chemically tagged and how their translation into protein is turned up or down. These later steps could let cells respond quickly to changes in their surroundings. The lab's long-term goal is to find these post-transcriptional controls and learn how they drive cell-type switching.
Why it matters
Cell plasticity helps drive complex diseases such as cancer and shapes immune responses. Showing how translation control and mRNA tags let cells switch identity rapidly could help explain how faults in these processes contribute to human disease. Because the work uses C. albicans, it also bears on how this fungus changes form.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jamie H Cate
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Biochemistry
Determine how eIF3, a translation start factor, and partner proteins interact with structured RNA elements to switch translation of specific mRNAs on or off, using molecular and structural approaches.
Fadia Ibrahim
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Biochemistry
Measure how cellular conditions that stall ribosomes change the mRNA fragments produced by ribothrypsis, using transcriptome-wide sequencing methods that capture both ends of each mRNA.
Haoping Liu
University of California-Irvine, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Investigate how Nrg1, a repressor that blocks hypha genes, is rapidly removed when Candida albicans starts forming hyphae, a step controlled by the Ras-cAMP-PKA signaling pathway.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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