Assistant Professor of Chemistry
email: mingch@berkeley.edu
office: 201 Lewis Hall
phone: 510-642-0509
lab: 204 Lewis Hall
lab phone: 510-643-9360
Research Interests
Chemical Biology, Organic Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics — Discovering new regulatory RNAs, elucidating mechanisms of RNA-based gene regulation, and engineering functional RNAs
Research Description
Comparison of sequenced genomes has led to the surprising conclusion that the number of genes does not scale with the complexity of the organism. Humans, for example, have a similar number of genes as the nematode worm. One solution to this “complexity conundrum” may lie with an expanded understanding of the roles played by ribonucleic acid (RNA) in biological processes. We have known for a long time that messenger RNA (mRNA) acts as a carrier of the instructions dictated by our genomic DNA to be translated into proteins. However, we are starting to realize that mRNA is an active agent in this process rather than a passive one, and that its regulatory activity is due to portions of mRNA that were previously considered “junk”—untranslated regions (UTRs) at the ends of the protein-coding sequences and introns in between.
Discovery of new functional RNAs will be key to understanding the purpose of the majority of our genome, and analysis of regulatory RNAs in particular will move us toward a greater understanding of the control circuits that govern the program of life. The Hammond lab complements computational discovery of candidate RNAs via bioinformatics with detailed experimental validation and mechanistic analysis of select RNAs that control interesting biological pathways. Furthermore, chemistry meets RNA biology as we take inspiration from natural RNA regulators for the design of novel gene control elements. As plants are among our primary model organisms, this research also provides new tools for analyzing gene expression in plants and has application toward engineering plants for biofuel production or other biotechnology projects.
Biography
Assistant Professor (2009)
B.S. California Institute of Technology (2000)
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (2005, Prof. Paul A. Bartlett, advisor)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University (2005-09, Prof. Ronald R. Breaker, advisor)
HHMI Predoctoral Fellow (2000-05)
Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface Investigator (2008-present)