Shawn Chen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Molecular and Cellular
Biology Program
Department of Biological Sciences
320
740-597-3112 (O), 740-597-3113(L)
E-mail: chens@ohio.edu
Research
Interests:
My research interests are in two areas: RNA molecular biology and microbial biochemistry. One long term goal is to elucidate the functional roles of RNA molecules, particularly small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), in cellular metabolism and how the biological activities are regulated at a molecular level.
ncRNAs (besides ribosomal and transfer RNAs) are several new classes of RNAs emerging from the genomic analysis of various organisms. They do not encode proteins. Mechanistically identified so far, they are mainly involved in RNA splicing, guiding RNA modification as components of enzyme complexes (snRNAs, snoRNAs, etc.) and transcription and translation processes as riboregulators (miRNAs, micRNAs, 6S RNA, etc.). ncRNAs have profound impact on ranging from the development of a mammal to the pathogenicity of bacteria. While we are continuing the investigation of the regulatory functions and mechanisms of ncRNAs in bacteria (E. coli, Bacillus, Actinomycetes and Cyanobacteria) and higher organisms, we also explore new biochemical and genetic strategies to identify and characterize other novel aspects of ncRNAs in bacteria, such as catalytical functions in metabolic network and post-transcriptional modifications. In the second area, environmental microbes including Streptomyces are versatile chemists who are capable of biosynthesizing secondary metabolites that have diverse chemical structures. Natural products with microbial origins are widely used as antibiotics in modern medicine. Many of them achieve the activities by perturbing biological processes involving RNA molecules. We are interested in the biosynthetic pathways of these natural products in bacteria and the biotechnological potentials. We are trying to create new bioactive compounds through bioengineering, and explore natural products targeting novel RNAs and the biogenesis processes.
This is a highly interdisciplinary research program involving molecular biology, biochemistry/chemistry, microbiology, genetics, bioinformatics, genomics, bioengineering and several fast evolving new sub-disciplines of biological sciences. I invite graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in these areas to join my laboratory. I teach microbiology and molecular biology related courses.
Recent
Publications:
Supekova L, Supek F, Lee, J, Chen S, Gray N, Pezacki JP, Schultz PG. Identification of human kinases involved in HCV replication by siRNA library screen. J. Bio. Chem. Submitted.
Liu W, Brock A, Chen S, Chen S-B, Schultz PG. Incorporate unnatural amino acids into proteins in mammalian cells. Nature Methods (2007), 4(3): 239-244.
Chen S, Schultz PG, Brock A. An improved system for generation and analysis of unnatural amino acids incorporated proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisae. J. Mol. Biol. Submitted.
Summerer D, Chen S, Wu N, Deiters A, Chin JW, Schultz PG. A genetically encoded fluorescent amino acid. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A (2006), 103(26): 9785-9786.
Sannes-Lowery KA, Cummins LL, Chen S,
Drader JJ, Hofstadler SA. High throughput drug discovery with ESI-FTICR. Int. J. of
Mass Spectrometry (2004), 238 (2): 197-206.
Chen S, Zhang A, Blyn LB, Storz G. MicC, a new small RNA regulates outer membrane protein OmpC at post-transcriptional level. J. Bacteriology (2004), 186 (20): 6689-6697.
Cummins LL, Chen S, Blyn LB, Sannes-Lowery KA, Drader JJ, Griffey RH, Hofstadler, SA. Multitarget affinity/specificity screening of natural products: finding and characterizing high affinity ligand from complex mixtures by using high performance mass spectrometry. J. of Nat. Prod. (2003), 66 (9): 1186-1190.
Chen S, Lesnik EA, Hall TA, Sampath R, Griffey RH, Ecker DJ, Blyn LB. A Bioinformatics approach to discover small RNA genes in E. coli genome. BioSystems (2002). 65:157-177.
Cropp A, Chen S, Liu H, Zhang W, Reynolds KA. Genetic approaches for controlling ratios of related polyketide products in fermentation processes. J. Industrial Microbiol. Biotechnol. (2001), 27(6):368-377.
Chen S, Roberts JB,