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news_id: 39

Dr. Lin He recieved 2009 MacArthur "genius" Fellows Award for her research in miRNA

Berkeley - Dr. Lin He, an assistant professor of molecular and cell biology in UC berkeley, is among the 24 awardees to recieve 2009 MacArthur "genius" Fellows award, announced Tuesday, Sept. 22, by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. "This was a big surprise," said He, who was informed a week ago. "I'm really grateful to whoever nominated me; it's a great honor. This kind of fellowship is tremendously helpful for a young person like me who has high-risk ideas, but not the money to do the research. This will allow us to be very exploratory without having to worry about financial resources."

Lin He's research involves a class of small ribonucleic acid, or RNA, that are not transcribed into protein like messenger RNA. Instead, these microRNAs or miRNAs bind to messenger RNA to regulate the amount of protein produced. This entirely new level of dosage regulation in mammals was not realized until 2000, even though miRNAs were first discovered in 1993. Now, miRNAs have been shown to be involved in many aspects of development and diseases, Dr. He said. "MicroRNAs are a mechanism to fine-tune gene expression simultaneously in many different pathways, achieving a homeostasis very much needed for many biological processes," Dr. He said. "In the case of cancer, where some microRNAs behave abnormally, detrimental effects will occur due to the loss of proper gene regulation by microRNAs."

Dr. He has shown that miRNAs play a role in a broad range of cancers, in particular those such as lung cancer that involve mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene. She is also investigating the role of miRNA in the development of B cell lymphomas.

"In an area that has generated intense effort among many leading researchers, Lin He has established early in her career the capacity to make significant advances with direct implications for the development of future cancer treatment strategies," the MacArthur Foundation noted.

Dr. He received a B.S. in 1997 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and a Ph.D. in 2003 from Stanford University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York until joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 2008.

Dr. Lin He recieved 2009 MacArthur "genius" Fellows Award for her research in miRNA

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