Division
- Laboratory & Genomic Medicine
Education
- BS, Clinical Lab Science (National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan)
- PhD, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (National Taiwan University)
Related Links
Research Interests
Nucleic acids are constantly assaulted by endogenous and exogenous agents. Interestingly, some of these agents are widely used in cancer chemotherapy, which was once thought to be solely due to their ability to cause lesions in genomic DNA. Consequently, research has predominantly focused on DNA damage repair and its influence on chemotherapy responses for decades. However, cellular RNAs are also susceptible to these chemicals and can form lesions similar to those found in DNAs. Yet, it remains unclear whether these chemically modified RNAs are toxic and how they contribute to chemotherapy responses or disease phenotypes. Given this, my research is centered on two key biological questions: 1) What are the functional effects of these chemically modified RNAs in cells, particularly on genome integrity and RNA functions? 2) What are the cellular mechanisms in response to these toxic RNA modifications? Exploring these questions will lead to novel discoveries in connecting nucleic acid damage and RNA biology, while providing new strategies for targeting RNA damage signaling to improve disease therapy.
Selected Publications
| Tsao N, Olabode J, Rodell R, Sun H, Brickner JR, Tsai MS, Pollina EA, Chen CK, Mosammaparast N. YTHDC1 cooperates with the THO complex to prevent RNA damage-induced DNA breaks. [Preprint] bioRxiv (2024). https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.14.585107 |
| Tsao N, Ashour ME, Mosammaparast N. How RNA impacts DNA repair. DNA Repair (Amst). 2023 Nov;131:103564. doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2023.103564. Epub 2023 Sep 9. Review. PubMed PMID: 37776841; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11232704. |
| Townley BA, Buerer L, Tsao N, Bacolla A, Mansoori F, Rusanov T, Clark N, Goodarzi N, Schmidt N, Srivatsan SN, Sun H, Sample RA, Brickner JR, McDonald D, Tsai MS, Walter MJ, Wozniak DF, Holehouse AS, Pena V, Tainer JA, Fairbrother WG, Mosammaparast N. A functional link between lariat debranching enzyme and the intron-binding complex is defective in non-photosensitive trichothiodystrophy. Mol Cell. 2023 Jul 6;83(13):2258-2275.e11. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.06.011. Epub 2023 Jun 26. PubMed PMID: 37369199; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10483886. |
| Tsao N, Soll JM, Mosammaparast N. Protocol to analyze and quantify protein-methylated RNA interactions in mammalian cells with a combination of RNA immunoprecipitation and nucleoside mass spectrometry. STAR Protoc. 2022 Jun 17;3(2):101268. doi: 10.1016/j.xpro.2022.101268. eCollection 2022 Jun 17. PubMed PMID: 35391937; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8980960. |
| Tsao N, Brickner JR, Rodell R, Ganguly A, Wood M, Oyeniran C, Ahmad T, Sun H, Bacolla A, Zhang L, Lukinović V, Soll JM, Townley BA, Casanova AG, Tainer JA, He C, Vindigni A, Reynoird N, Mosammaparast N. Aberrant RNA methylation triggers recruitment of an alkylation repair complex. Mol Cell. 2021 Oct 21;81(20):4228-4242.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2021.09.024. PubMed PMID: 34686315; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8931856. |