University of Gothenburg

Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Decoding Gene Regulation Through Small RNAs

We explore how RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and RNA interference (RNAi) shape gene regulation at the molecular level. Our research aims to uncover fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and develop innovative tools to target disease-driving genes.

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research

Our Research.

RNA interference

We investigate how small RNAs guide gene silencing, uncovering novel RNAi mechanisms that can be harnessed for targeted gene regulation and potential therapeutic applications.

Gene Regulation

Our research explores how RNA molecules control gene expression, with a focus on transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation in normal and disease states.

RNA-Binding Proteins

We study RBPs and their role in RNA metabolism, including their impact on mRNA stability, splicing, and translation, to better understand their function in health and disease.

Method Development

We develop and refine cutting-edge techniques, such as APEX proximity labeling, to map RNA-protein interactions with high spatial and temporal resolution.

People

Our team.

Aishe A. Sarshad

Principal Investigator

Aishe is an Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg and the Institute of Biomedicine. Before this, she spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Markus Hafner (NIAMS, NIH) and received her PhD from the Karolinska Institute in 2014 with Piergiorgio Percipalle (CMB).

Hang Huynh

PhD student

Hang (goes by Finn) joined the lab in January 2022. Hang received a Master's degree in 2021 from the University of Tsukuba in Japan where he focused on the role of Fibulin-4 in the maintenance of endothelial function and its relationship to thoracic aortic aneurysms.

Michelle Fong

PhD Student

Michelle joined the lab in jan 2024 as a Master thesis student, exploring the mode of action of AGO2:siRNA complex in human cancer cells. She will contrinue on exploring duplex RNAs as a joint PhD student with AstraZeneca

Kuerbannisha Amahong

Postdoc

Kuerbannisha joined the lab in December 2024. She earned her PhD from Zhejiang University in 2024. Her doctoral research focused on RNA virus-host interactions, aiming to identify novel targets for antiviral drug development.

Qi Wu

PhD Student

Qi joined the lab in November 2025. She received her master’s degree from Sun Yat-sen University in 2025, where her research focused on metabolic, immunological, and chemotherapy resistance mechanisms in colorectal cancer.

Allumni.

Postdoctoral fellows:

- Evgeniia Shcherbinina July 2023 - October 2025 Now at AstraZeneca

- Iwona Nowak November 2020 - December 2024 Now at AstraZeneca

- Hsiang-Chi Huang July 2021 - August 2004 Now Assistant Professor at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)

- Vivian Lobo January 2020 - December 2023 Now postdoc at University of Bonn

- Carola Fernandez March 2020 - March 2022 Now Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca

Thesis and project students:

- Michelle Fong, MSc thesis student and lab tech. Now a PhD student in the lab

- Geng Wenchao, MSc thesis student

- Ana Pereira, MSc thesis student

- Reyhaneh Rezaei, MSc thesis student

- Esther Güse, Erasmus project student, Now PhD student in Germany

- Melis Kanik, Erasmus project student, Now PhD student in Belgium

- Ulrika Alexandersson, Lab manager, Now with Maria Falkenberg at UGOT

- Axel Niklasson, BSc thesis student, Now doing his Masters in Science

- Isra Hassan Hamzo, BMA thesis student, Now working at Östra hospital as a certified BMA

- Wail Chrifi, Lab technician

Publications

Our Publications.

RBProximity-CLIP Enables Subcellular Mapping of RNA–Binding Protein Interactions at Nucleotide Resolution

Iwona Nowak*, Ahsan H. Polash*, Hang T. Huynh*, Mahekdeep Kaur, Vivian Lobo, Jérémy Scutenaire, Michelle Fong, Ghaliah Alluhaibi, Dimitrios G. Anastasakis, Markus Hafner#, Daniel Benhalevy#, Aishe A Sarshad#

BioRxiv 2025.12.12.693770; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.12.693770

Extended nuclear glycosylation is a common post-translational modification

Jon Lundstrøm, Michelle Fong, Annika Thorsell, Ekaterina Mirgorodskaya, Johannes Fuchs, Ujala Bashir, Jordi Hintzen, Chunsheng Jin, F. Ifthiha Mohideen, Evgeniia Shcherbinina, Vivian Lobo, Alesia A. Tietze, Lara K. Mahal, Aishe A Sarshad#, Daniel Bojar#. BioRxiv 2025.12.02.691741; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.02.691741

Nuclear AGO2 supports influenza A virus replication through type-I interferon regulation

Hsiang-Chi Huang#, Michelle Fong, Iwona Nowak, Evgeniia Shcherbinina, Vivian Lobo, Danica F Besavilla, Hang T Huynh, Karin Schön, Jakub O Westholm, Carola Fernandez, Angana A H Patel, Clotilde Wiel, Volkan I Sayin, Dimitrios G

Anastasakis, Davide Angeletti#, Aishe A Sarshad#. Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 53, Issue 7, 24 April 2025, gkaf268, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaf268

Loss of Lamin A leads to the nuclear translocation of AGO2 and compromised RNA interference

Vivian Lobo*, Iwona Nowak*, Carola Fernandez, Ana Iris Correa Muler, Jakub O Westholm, Hsiang-Chi Huang, Ivo Fabrik, Hang T Huynh, Evgeniia Shcherbinina, Melis Poyraz, Anetta Härtlova, Daniel Benhalevy, Davide Angeletti, Aishe A Sarshad#. Nucleic Acids Research, 2024;, gkae589, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae589. PMID: 38994560.

Integrative transcriptomics and proteomic profiline of the effects of cell confluency on gene expression

Vivian Lobo*, Evgeniia Shcherbinina*, Jakub O Westholm, Iwona Nowak, Hsiang-Chi Huang, Davide Angeletti, Dimitrios G Anastasakis, Aishe A Sarshad#. Scientific Data 11, 617 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03465-z. PMID: 38866801

Biochemical Separation of Cytoplasmic and Nuclear Fraction for Downstream Molecular Analysis.

Hang T Huynh*, Evgeniia Shcherbinina*, Hsiang‐Chi Huang, Reyhaneh Rezaei, Aishe A Sarshad#. Current Protocols. 2024 May;4(5):e1042. doi: 10.1002/cpz1.1042. PMID: 38767195.

Argonaute proteins take center stage in cancers

Iwona Nowak and Aishe A Sarshad#. Cancers 2021, 13(4), 788; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13040788. PMID: 33668654

For full list please see

https://scholar.google.com/citationsuser=bj5UmV0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

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