My laboratory has made a number of important contributions over the past several years in identifying and characterizing critical mediators of epigenome. These include a number of chromatin remodeling (human NURF, CERF, WCRF/ACF) and chromatin modifying UTX/MLL3/4, JARID1d, LSD1-CoREST complexes. Importantly, the emerging roles for non-coding RNAs in epigenetic regulation and their crosstalk with chromatin regulatory complexes persuaded us to characterize the key players in the biogenesis and effector function of non-coding RNAs.

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• Long noncoding RNAs with enhancer-like function in human cells.
• Physical and functional association of a trimethyl H3K4 demethylase and Ring6a/MBLR, a polycomb-like protein.
• Integrator, a multiprotein mediator of small nuclear RNA processing, associates with the C-terminal repeat of RNA polymerase II.
• TRBP recruits the Dicer complex to Ago2 for microRNA processing and gene silencing.
• The Microprocessor complex mediates the genesis of microRNAs.
• List of Publications

Dr. Ramin Shiekhattar recently joined the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He is also the Director of the Cancer Epigenetics Research Program, Chief of the Division of Cancer Genomics and Epigenetics as well as the academic Director of the Oncogenomic Core Facility. Dr. Shiekhattar obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas and completed his postdoctoral training at UMDNJ.

Dr. Shiekhattar’s laboratory has made a number of important contributions over the past years in identifying and characterizing important mediators of epigenetic regulation and noncoding RNA processing that contribute to cancer development.  Importantly, laboratories’ recent work has begun to explore a class of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) that behave similar to transcriptional enhancers.  The laboratory is interested in deciphering the function of this class of lncRNAs in the context of relevant models of development and disease, using state of the arts genomics and proteomics approaches.  These data will be coupled with the development of novel computational methods to decipher the lncRNA “code” that helps to define the role of enhancer RNAs in development and disease.