Laboratory of Molecular and Biochemical Genetics

DESCRIPTION OF LAB RESEARCH WORK
Key Areas of Research:
  • Nucleic Acids (DNA and RNA) Structure – Function Relationships
  • DNA Topology and Recombination Mechanisms
  • Human and Mouse Stem Cell Research – Pluripotency and Reprogramming
  • Cancer Research and Genome Stability/Higher-Order Structure
  • Genome Editing and Engineering of Editing Tools
  • Cell and Gene Therapy
  • Telomere Biology
  • Synthetic Biology

 

Peter DrogeLEAD PI
Peter Dröge
Associate Professor

Email: [email protected]
Phone: (65) 6316 2809
Office: SBS-05N-20
Dr. Harshyaa Makhija
Research Fellow

Email: [email protected] / [email protected]
Namrata Chaudhari
Research Fellow

Email: [email protected]
Ng Lee Mei
Research Fellow

Email: [email protected]
Sabrina Peter
Research Associate

Email: [email protected]​
Tieo Galen
Research Assistant

Email: [email protected]
Stephen Wong Qi Rong
PhD Student

Email: [email protected]

Suki Roy
PhD Student

Email: [email protected]
Syed Moiz Ahmed
PhD Student

Email: [email protected]
Zeng Yingying
PhD Student

Email: [email protected]​

 

  • Understanding the role of the human oncofetal chromatin-structuring protein high mobility group AT-hook 2 (HMGA2) in cancer/stem cell genome stability and as an important predictive factor for chemotherapeutic responses in the clinic and translation into a drug target.
  • Application of our lambda integrase human genome editing platform in cell/gene therapy and for the production of biologics.
  • Spin-off LambdaGenTherapeutics: http://www.lambdagentherapeutics.com/
  • Understanding the role of pluripotency factor UTF1 in cellular reprogramming and intergenerational epigenetic inheritance.
  • Understanding and translational application of the novel non-coding function for the histone 1.2 messenger RNA in human telomere length homeostasis.
Full list of publications can be found here
  • Syed Moiz Ahmed and Peter Dröge (2109). Oncofetal HMGA2 attenuates genotoxic damage induced by topoisomerase II target compounds through the regulation of local DNA topology. Submitted.
  • Syed Moiz Ahmed, Priya Dharshana Ramani , Stephen Wong Qi Rong, Xiaodan Zhao, Roland Ivanyi-Nagy, Tang Choong Leong, Clarinda Chua, Zhizhong Li, Hannes Hentze, Iain Tan Bee Huat, Jie Yan, Ramanuj DasGupta, Peter Dröge (2019). The chromatin structuring protein HMGA2 determines human subtelomere stability and cancer chemosensitivity. PLOS ONE, in press.
  • Ivanyi-Nagy R, Ahmed, S.M, Peter S, Dharshana, R.P, Ong P.F, Dreesen O, and Dröge P. (2018). The RNA interactome of human telomerase RNA reveals a coding-independent role for a histone mRNA in telomere homeostasis. eLife, pii: e40037. doi: 10.7554/eLife.40037.
  • Makhija H, Roy S, Hoon S, Ghadessy, J.F, Wong D, Jaiswal R, Campana D, and Dröge P. (2018). A novel λ integrase-mediated seamless vector transgenesis platform for therapeutic protein expression. Nucl. Acids Res., Sep 19; 46(16):e99. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky500
  • Bao Q, Morshedi A, Wang F, Bhargy S, Pervushin K, Yu WP, Dröge P. (2017). Utf1 contributes to intergenerational epigenetic inheritance of pluripotency. Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 6;7(1):14612. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14426-5.
  • Zhao X, Peter S, Dröge P*, Yan J*. (2017). Oncofetal HMGA2 effectively curbs unconstrained (+) and (-) DNA supercoiling. Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 16;7(1):8440. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09104-5. * co-lead authors
  • Peter S, Yu H, Ivanyi-Nagy R, Dröge P. (2016) Cell-based high-throughput compound screening reveals functional interaction between oncofetal HMGA2 and topoisomerase I. Nucleic Acids Res., 15;44(22):e162
  • Chandra S, Makhija H, Peter S, Wai CMM, Li J, Zhu J, Ren Z, Stagno D`Alcontres M, Wei SJ, Chee S, Ghadessy JF, Dröge P (2015) Single copy safe harbor transgenesis in human Line-1 elements. Nucl. Acids Res.; pii: gkv1345.
  • Yu H, Lim HH, Tjokro NO, Sathiyanathan P, Natarajan S, Chew TW, Klonisch T, Goodman SD, Surana U, Dröge P. (2014) Chaperoning HMGA2 protein protects stalled replication forks in stem and cancer cells. Cell Reports 6(4):684-97. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2014.01.014.
  • Feng, S., H. Li, J. Zhao, K. Pervushin, K. Lowenhaupt, T.U. Schwartz, and P. Dröge, (2011) Alternate rRNA secondary structures as regulators of translation. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 18(2):169-76.