Professors Bala Rao and Albert Keung have received a $1.3M research grant from the NIH

Professors Bala Rao and Albert Keung have received a $1.3M research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The project, “Scalable platforms for understudied histone modifications and modifiers” is designed to push the boundaries of biology and bioengineering in both its experimental scale and its exploration of the biochemistry associated with the chemical and structural modifications of proteins that reside within every cell.

Two of these protein structures, chromatin and histones play key roles in regulating when and how RNA and DNA are expressed. Through its control of gene expression, changes in chromatin biochemistry and structure underlie nearly all cellular processes.

The research team will develop “open source” platforms that are scalable, cost-efficient, and easily adopted by other investigators in chromatin biology. Based on next-generation yeast surface display systems, the platforms will enable research on both common and understudied histone modifications, enabling new high-throughput measurements to answer important research questions in chromatin biology.

Congratulations to Professors Rao and Keung for this recognition of your prowess as research pioneers!