Nikolay Shirokikh
Nikolay Shirokikh is a molecular and RNA biologist. He leads the RNA Multi-Omics and Design Laboratory (RMODEL) at the Australian Centre for RNA Therapeutics in Cancer, School of Human Sciences, The University of Western Australia, where he is Group Leader and Senior Lecturer, and co-leads Biocodecs group (https://biocodecs.org/) together with Alice Cleynen.
His work asks how cells read messenger RNA, how fast, and what happens when that reading goes wrong. He produced the first genome-wide evidence of ribosomal scanning, the step in which a ribosome inspects a messenger RNA to find where a gene begins, published as first author in Nature in 2016. To make that observation possible he developed translation complex profile sequencing (TCP-seq), released as a protocol in Nature Protocols in 2017 and since taken up by laboratories worldwide in yeast, mammalian cells and plants.
Nikolay Shirokikh studies RNA level control of gene expression: how messenger RNA is translated into protein, how stable it is, how it is chemically modified, and how those properties change when a cell is stressed, ageing, or resisting a drug.
His interests span six areas:
Regulation of RNA translation and stability, including during cell stress
RNA control of the onset of drug resistance in cancer
RNA control of immune activation
Transcriptomic signatures and mechanisms of ageing and longevity
Transcriptome and epitranscriptome of environmental adaptation
New fundamental and clinical RNA interrogation methods, with a focus on accessible high-throughput technologies, including for personalised medicine
The approach is deliberately trans-disciplinary. It joins molecular and cell biology to bioinformatics, machine learning and mathematical modelling, using in-house expertise alongside collaborations built to supply what the group does not hold itself.
Abstracts this author is presenting: