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Departmental homepageProfessor Miska is Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics and Head of the Department of Biochemistry.
He lectures Natural Sciences (Biological) and Medical Sciences students in Part I. He also lectures Natural Sciences (Biological) students in Part II and Part III and MPhil and PhD students. He supervises Part II, Part III, MPhil and PhD students in his research group. At St John’s, he supervises Biology of Cells (Part IA), Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Part IB) and Cell and Developmental Biology (Part IB).
Professor Miska is a molecular geneticist who has done pioneering work on the understanding of gene regulation through RNA. He led the first genome-wide analyses of microRNAs in animals. He discovered the piRNA pathway in C. elegans, which controls transposons in the germline. He went on to demonstrate that RNA interference pathways can lead to a mutigenerational, truly epigenetic memory in C. elegans, a first in animals. He also developed C. elegans into a host-pathogen model to identify a new class of RNA-modifying enzymes, TUTases, which restrict RNA viruses in animals. TUTases are currently being targeted for antiviral and anti-cancer therapy. Finally, he developed revolutionary tools to determine RNA structure in living cells and is the founder of STORM Therapeutics, which develops treatment and diagnosis markers of disease using RNAs and RNA modifications.
Price JL, Ziv O, Pinckert ML, Lim A, Miska EA. rnaCrosslinkOO: an object-oriented R package for the analysis of RNA structural data generated by RNA crosslinking experiments. Bioinformatics. 2024 Mar 29;40(4):btae193. PMID: 38597883
Ziv O, Price J, Shalamova L, Kamenova T, Goodfellow I, Weber F, Miska EA.The Short- and Long-Range RNA-RNA Interactome of SARS-CoV-2. Mol Cell.2020 Dec 17;80(6):1067-1077.e5. Epub2020 Nov 5. PMID: 33259809; PMCID: PMC7643667.
Maori E, Navarro IC, Boncristiani H, Seilly DJ, Rudolph KLM, Sapetschnig A,Lin CC, Ladbury JE, Evans JD, Heeney JL, Miska EA. A Secreted RNABinding Protein Forms RNA-Stabilizing Granules in the Honeybee Royal Jelly.Mol Cell. 2019 May 2;74(3):598-608.e6. Epub 2019 Apr 18. PMID: 31051140; PMCID: PMC6509358.
Ashe A, Sapetschnig A, Weick EM, Mitchell J, Bagijn MP, Cording AC,Doebley AL, Goldstein LD, Lehrbach NJ, Le Pen J, Pintacuda G, SakaguchiA, Sarkies P, Ahmed S, Miska EA. piRNAs can trigger a multigenerationalepigenetic memory in the germline of C. elegans. Cell. 2012 Jul 6;150(1):88-99. Epub 2012 Jun 25. PMID: 22738725; PMCID: PMC3464430.
