Wilusz Lab News

June

• The Wilusz lab is awarded an Innovative Project Award from the American Heart Association.
• Undergraduate Ellie Kolb joins us for a second summer as part of BCM’s SMART program.
• Jeremy gives an invited talk at the EMBO Practical Course on Circular RNAs in Trento, Italy.

March

• The lab moves to brand new lab space at Dynamic One.
• CPSB student Feng-Cheng Hsieh officially joins the lab for his thesis work.

February

• Jeremy gives an invited talk at University of Houston.
• Rina gives a talk for the BCM RNA & Chromatin Club.

January

• The Wilusz lab is awarded an R21 from NIAID.
• CPSB student Charlotte Le Roux starts her rotation in the lab.
• CPSB student Junzhe Guo starts his rotation in the lab.

December

• Wilusz lab wins 1st Prize in the gingerbread house decorating contest at the THINC holiday party.
• Wilusz lab wins the grinch award in the THINC door decoration competition.

November

• Jeremy gives an invited talk at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
• Jeremy is quoted in a Nature technology feature on the opportunities and challenges in studying circular RNAs.
• Jeremy’s RNA-protein complexes course is voted best course for 2023-2024 by the CPSB graduate students.

September

• Aishwarya, Ghislain, and Rina present their latest work at the THINC retreat. Aishwarya wins a poster prize!

July

• G&G student Harita Mani starts her rotation in the lab.
• CPSB student Feng-Cheng Hsieh starts his rotation in the lab.
• Collaborative work with the Bonasio lab on a new ligation-independent RNA sequencing method is published in Molecular Cell.

June

• Undergraduate Ellie Kolb joins the lab as part of BCM’s SMART program.
• Collaborative work with the Biagioli lab on functional roles for a circular RNA derived from the Huntington’s disease locus is published in Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids.
• Jeremy presented a poster on some of our latest work at the 29th Annual Meeting of the RNA Society in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• We were awarded an equipment supplement to our MIRA grant from NIGMS.
• Jeremy presents some of our latest work at the symposium in honor of Phil Sharp’s 80th birthday.

May

• Ghislain gives a talk at the Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Regulatory & Non-coding RNAs.

April

• Rina was awarded our departmental Ruth McLean Bowman Bowers Excellence in Research Award.
• Aishwarya successfully passed her qualifying exam.
• Jeremy gives an invited talk at Florida Atlantic University.
• Brad’s outlook piece highlighting how Malat1 can traffic to the cytoplasm and be translated in cultured mouse neurons is published in Genes & Development.

March

• Aayushi, Aishwarya, and Ghislain present their latest work at our departmental retreat in League City, TX. Aishwarya wins a poster prize!
• Ghislain gives a talk for the BCM RNA & Chromatin Club.
• Jeremy co-organizes the RNA Biology theme at Discover BMB in San Antonio, TX and gives a talk describing our recent work on Integrator.

February

• Collaborative work with the de la Mata lab on the ability of circular RNAs to induce target-directed microRNA degradation is published in Nucleic Acids Research.
• Meisheng’s protocol chapter for better purification of circular RNAs using RNase R is published in Methods in Molecular Biology.
• Collaborative work with the Romanov lab on a circular RNA biomarker for bladder cancer is published in Cancers.
• 1,000 requests for plasmids from our lab have now been fulfilled by Addgene.
• The Wilusz lab celebrates its 10th anniversary.

December

• Postdoc Brad Wright joins the group.

November

• Rina’s work on how IntS6 and the Integrator phosphatase module tune the efficiency of select premature transcription termination events is published in Molecular Cell.
• Collaborative work with the Conn lab on improving circular RNA over-expression plasmids is posted to bioRxiv.
• Rina and Christopher present their latest work at the FASEB RNA Processing in Cancer conference.
  Yuxi successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.

October

Collaborative work with the Lionnet and Lehmann labs on Integrator’s role in generating transcriptionally poised Pol II clusters at histone loci is posted to bioRxiv.

September

• Staff Scientist Arya Vindu joins the group.
• Jeremy gives an invited talk at the 4th Annual Noncoding RNA Symposium at the University of Illinois Chicago.

August

• Jeremy presents our latest work at the EMBO Workshop on Signal regulation by protein phosphatases in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Jeremy gives a talk on the Integrator complex at the Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Eukaryotic mRNA Processing.

July

Collaborative work with the de la Mata lab on the ability of circular RNAs to induce target-directed microRNA degradation is posted to bioRxiv.

June

• Undergraduate Luis Teran-Rodriguez joins the lab as part of BCM’s SMART program.
• Collaborative work with the Bonasio lab on a new ligation-independent RNA sequencing method is posted to bioRxiv.

May

• Jeremy gives an invited talk on circular RNAs at PEGS Boston.
• Jeremy gives an invited talk for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory RNA seminar series.

April

• Rina gives a talk for the BCM RNA & Chromatin Club.
• Jeremy presents a poster at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) 2023 RNA Biology Symposium.

March

New insights into how IntS6 and the Integrator phosphatase module tune the efficiency of select premature transcription termination events is posted to bioRxiv.

February

Jeremy is quoted in a Nature news piece on the prevalence of nucleotide sequence errors present in published papers.

January

• CPSB student Aishwarya Rajurkar starts her rotation in the lab.
• Collaborative review on long noncoding RNAs written with many of the field’s leaders is published in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.
• Collaborative effort to propose common nomenclature for naming circRNAs is published in Nature Cell Biology.
• Jeremy gave an invited talk for the Columbia University Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics.

November

Jeremy gives an invited talk at the RNA at the Bench and Bedside III conference in Carlsbad, CA.

September

Staff Scientist Ghislain Breton joins the Wilusz Lab.

August

• Research Assistant Aayushi Shah joins the Wilusz Lab.

July

• Yuxi Ai, a Wilusz lab alum, was awarded a Blavatnik Family Fellowship in Biomedical Research that will fully cover her stipend for the next academic year at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the Center for RNA Therapeutics at Houston Methodist.

June

• Jeremy Wilusz gives a talk at the 27th Annual Meeting of the RNA Society in Boulder, Colo.
• Undergraduate Abel Gurung joins the lab as part of BCM’s SMART program.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the NIH RNA Club.

May

• Our collaborative review with Li Yang and Ling-Ling Chen on circular RNAs is published in Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. View article
• Jeremy Wilusz gives a talk at the Cold Spring Harbor meeting on Regulatory & Noncoding RNAs.

April

• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at University of California, Irvine.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the BCM RNA & Chromatin Club.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the Drexel University Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives a talk at the virtual Rita Allen Foundation Scholars meeting.

March

• Laboratory director Chris Dinh joins the Wilusz Lab.
• Yuxi’s Ai's paper on the specificity and efficiency of CRISPR/Cas13 effectors is published in Nucleic Acids Research. View article

February

• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for Université de Moncton, Faculty of Life Sciences.

January

• Postdoc Christopher Fields joins the Wilusz Lab..
• Chemical, Physical & Structural Biology graduate student Alexander Ewing starts his rotation in the Wilusz Lab..

December

• The Wilusz Lab moves to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas to join the Therapeutic Innovation Center (THINC) and the Verna & Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
• Jeremy Wilusz is named a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research.
• Jeremy Wilusz was appointed to the Ruth McLean Bowman Bowers Professorship at Baylor College of Medicine.
• Jeremy Wilusz gives an invited talk for the Ohio State University Molecular Life Sciences Seminar Series.