Oluwasegun Akinniyi
About Me
My bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. My post-bachelor’s research in pharmacology was at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and my Master’s degree at the Catholic University of America, DC. At NIH, I worked on curing of prions by yeast chaperones in Summer 2018.
Research Interest
The Reese lab studies eukaryotic gene regulation at the transcriptional, post-transcriptional and protein degradation levels by the (Carbon catabolite repression 4 – Negative on TATA) Ccr4-Not protein complex in yeasts. My interest is in the deadenylation of mRNA by the Ccr4 subunit of the protein complex as a gene expression regulation mechanism.
Research Summary
Deadenylation of mRNA poly(A) tail is the initial and often rate limiting step in mRNA degradation. Ccr4-Not and Pan2/3 complexes, the major deadenylase complexes in eukaryotes each contain a protein subunit having catalytic deadenylase activity, and different models have been proposed for the recruitment of mRNAs to these complexes. Processing bodies (PB) and stress granules (SG) are cellular biomolecular condensates comprising ribonucleoproteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Translationally stalled mRNAs are sequestered in processing bodies – the condensate to which Ccr4-Not complex localizes -, translation machineries localize to stress granules (SG), while mRNA-degrading enzymes and degradation-related RNA binding proteins are distributed between PBs and SGs.
Using RIP-seq, Hire-PAT among other methods, I am investigating the global dynamics of regulation of gene expression at the level of mRNA degradation by these two deadenylase machineries in stressed conditions.