RNA-Bio Research Group

On April 20-22, 2016, two of RNA-Bio Research Group's members: Ang Kai Cheen and  Bakhtiar Affendi Bin Bukari  attended the 3rd Regional Conference on Biosensor, Biodiagnostics, Biochips and Biotechnology 2016 ( 3rdRC4Bs-2016 ) organized by the AIMST University (Malaysia) in collaboration  with King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Thailand),  Universiti Malaysia Perlis (Malaysia) and Universiti Teknologi MARA  (Malaysia).

On April 19, 2016, we are very excited to welcome our invited speaker, Dr. Lean Qi Ying ,    to deliver her talk entitled "Potential of Enoxaparin oligosaccharides in ulcerative colitis".  

Our member, Dr. Citartan Marimuthu , presented a talk entitled "REPORA-6 RNA aptamer as the capturing agent o f Erythropoeitin in do ping detection" at the Aptamers 2016 Symposium , April 4, 2016 at St. Hilda's College , Oxford, Cowley Place, UK.

On 15 January 2016, we have our weekly Journal Club, presented by Cheah Hong Leong on the article "The intracellular sRNA transcriptome of Listeria monocytogenes during growth in macrophages".

Viral infection is a common cause of disease. Outbreak of zoonotic viral diseases such as SARS and Ebola have high mortality rate , as there is a lack of effective prevention and therapeutic measures. Instead, recovery from viral infections often depend on the immune system, which can be divided into adaptive and innate immunity . The innate antiviral immunity in mammalian cells is mediated by interferons, whereby interferon stimulated genes (ISGs) are upregulated to establish an antiviral state. We are interested in interferon-based antiviral response in host cells, particularly in the detection of viral nucleic acids, the modulation of Janus kinase -Signal transducer and activator of transcription (JAK-STAT) signaling pathway, and the role of stress granules in antiviral activity. Our current research is on interferon regulatory factor 9 (IRF9), which is involved in signaling that results in upregulation of ISGs during type I interferon response. We want to elucidate the mec...

Non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) do not encode proteins but function directly at the level of the RNA or in complexes with protein as RNP. Bacterial small npcRNAs constitute a structurally diverse class of molecules that are typically 50–200 nt long and play a crucial role in many cellular networks, including responses to environmental stress, plasmid and viral replication, quorum sensing and bacterial virulence. These npcRNAs act either by base pairing with target mRNAs or by modulating protein activity. We aim to identify and characterize npcRNAs from clinical pathogen. Our model pathogens are Plasmodium falciparum, Salmonella typhi, Vibrio cholera and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We combined experimental and bioinformatics strategies in our npcRNAs search. The discovery of novel npcRNA in pathogenic organism will lead to studies involving structure, expression, function, roles in diseases and potential target for diagnostic.