Xiao Shu
Post-doctoral Fellow
Research interests
Over 160 types of chemical modifications have been identified in RNA, which play important roles in the control of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level, such as N6-methyladenosine (m6A), pseudouridine (Ψ), and 5-methylcytosine (m5C). To understand the roles of chemical modifications in RNA at the nucleotide level, it is essential to develop methods mapping these modification sites at single base resolution. Although many methods have achieved the detection of m6A, Ψ and m5C in the field, there are still some limitations for the RT-truncation-based and bisulfite-sequencing-like methods. Similar to TET-Assisted Pyridine borane Sequencing (TAPS), for direct detection of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) at single loci resolution, my current interests are developing methods to detect mRNA m6A, Ψ and m5C sites directly by chemical conversion, which can provide convenient tools for investigating biology processes and diseases related to mRNA modifications.
Background
I read polymer science and engineering at Zhejiang University in China from 2013 to 2017, followed by a PhD at Zhejiang University in nucleic acid chemistry and biology under the mentorship of Dr. Jianzhao Liu from 2017 to 2022. During my PhD study, I developed metabolic labelling methods to detect mRNA modifications at single base resolution. I joined Chunxiao Song’s group at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research as a Post-doctoral researcher in October 2022 and continue my research for the direct detection of mRNA modifications.