User:Leec17/sandbox/Kazuko Nishikura

Kazuko Nishikura is currently a professor at The Wistar Institute studying the process of RNA editing. She participated in the discovery of adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR), a family of genes responsible for editing RNA transcribed from DNA.

Early life, education, and career

Dr. Nishikura was born on April 8, 1949 in Japan. She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry from Kanazawa University and a Ph.D. in medical science from Osaka University. She performed her thesis work and obtained her first postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology and obtained her second postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. In 1982, she joined The Wistar Institute as an assistant professor and, in 1995, became a professor .

Research

ADAR was first accidentally discovered in 1987 by Brenda Bass and Harold Weintraub. ADAR is a family of genes responsible for the post-transcriptional RNA editing. In higher eukaryotes, it converts adenosine to inosine residues by deamination, a process vital for the expression and function of microRNA. Dr. Nishikura continues to study ADAR in relation to miRNA, non-coding double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), miRNA-induced silencing complex (miRISC) proteins, and human diseases . To study ADAR function, several techniques, including RNA editing , polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and gene sequencing techniques are used.