Research

Zebrafish embryos provide a powerful model to study how a single cell develops into a complex organism. Because most regulatory mechanisms are conserved between zebrafish and humans, this system allows us to uncover principles of gene regulation relevant to human biology. Zebrafish also enable unique opportunities to study post-transcriptional control with temporal and spatial resolution. By injecting mRNAs at the one-cell stage, we can directly monitor their decay, localization, and translation as embryos rapidly diversify into distinct cell types.

We are particularly interested in how flaviviruses such as dengue and Zika reprogram host gene expression. Using cell-based systems and human organoids, we investigate how these viruses manipulate mRNA translation to ensure successful infection. While transcriptional and stability changes also occur, our work shows that the major regulatory shifts during infection happen at the level of translation. Understanding these mechanisms provides insights into viral pathogenesis and may inform strategies for antiviral therapies.

It was once assumed that mRNAs in higher organisms contained only a single protein-coding region. Our work and others have overturned this view, revealing thousands of small open reading frames (sORFs) hidden within untranslated regions and long noncoding RNAs. Many of these sORFs are actively translated, producing previously unrecognized microproteins. We aim to uncover the biological functions of these small proteins and how they expand the coding capacity and regulatory potential of the genome.