Translation Control, Protein Biosynthesis & RNA Degradation

In Simple Terms

Every cell carries thousands of working copies of its genes, called messenger RNAs. These are the instructions a cell reads to build proteins, the molecules that do almost everything in biology. A cell cannot read every message at once, so it constantly chooses which instructions to translate, how fast, and which ones to recycle or throw away. We study how those choices are made. Getting them right lets a cell grow, respond to food, cope with stress and stay healthy; getting them wrong contributes to disease. We build methods that let us watch this decision making in real cells, message by message.

The Science

Our experimental core is Translation Complex Profile sequencing (TCP-seq) and its enhanced variant eTCP-seq, which fix and capture ribosomes and pre-initiation complexes across whole transcriptomes to reveal, at near single-nucleotide resolution, where the translation machinery sits during scanning, initiation, elongation and termination. We pair this with Stochastic Translation Efficiency (STE) modelling to separate genuine regulation from the noise inherent in per-cell protein synthesis, and with INDEGRA to read RNA integrity and degradation kinetics directly from the same sequencing data. Together these let us connect the moment-to-moment behaviour of ribosomes to the stability and turnover of the messages they read, and to quantify how quickly cells reshape their proteome when conditions change.

Team

• Dr Nikolay ShirokikhLead
• Prof Alice CleynenLead
• Dr Danielle RudlerSenior Postdoctoral Staff Scientist
• Orlane RossiniPhD student
• Shafi MahmudStaff
• Mr Abel SillyPhD student
• Fatima AljbwriHonours student
• Ben ChungMasters student
• Siyun ChenMasters student
• Faiza ChowdhuryGuest Scientist
• Agin RavindranGuest Scientist

Tools & Methods

Key Publications

All publications