RNA biology
Athanasios-Nasir Shaukat
I’m Nassos, a biologist and postdoctoral fellow in the Jinwei Zhang Lab at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. I study how RNAs interact with their partners — ribonucleases and other RNA-binding proteins, as well as other RNAs — and how these interactions shape RNA processing and gene regulation, combining structural biology with a background in genome editing, RNA-seq and biochemistry.
Research at a glance
From enzymes to interactions
- 2014 – 2017 · PatrasDeadenylasesBiochemistry of the PNLDC1 deadenylase, a poly(A)-specific exonuclease of early development.
- 2017 – 2023 · PhD, PatrastRNA-processing enzymesHuman RNase Z and RNase P — including how the ELAC1 paralog processes vault RNAs and other non-coding RNAs beyond tRNA maturation.
- 2023 – now · NIHRNA and its partnersStructures of RNA–protein and RNA–RNA interactions, from ribonucleases to other RNA-binding proteins.
Toolkit cryo-EM · biochemistry & enzymology · CRISPR-Cas9 · RNA-seq
Selected publications
Recent & first-author work
- An ancestral tRNA maturation enzyme repurposed for cytoplasmic non-coding RNA processing
bioRxiv (2026)First authorPreprint · not yet peer-revieweddoi:10.64898/2026.10.07.757187
Human ELAC1 (RNase ZS) is dispensable for canonical tRNA processing but binds structured RNA polymerase III transcripts and directly cleaves all four vault RNAs near their 3′ ends — evidence that the two human RNase Z paralogs have specialised. - PNLDC1 deadenylase affects translational rate and cell proliferation in mESCs
RNA (2026) advance online publicationdoi:10.1261/rna.081162.126
Pnldc1-knockout mouse embryonic stem cells stay pluripotent but translate less; the gene is silenced by promoter methylation during differentiation, and two compounds found by virtual screening against a PNLDC1 model curb aberrant proliferation. - Mitochondrial tRNA biogenesis, modifications and disease relevance
Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol (2026) advance online publicationReviewdoi:10.1038/s41580-026-00999-5
Reviews how mitochondrial tRNAs are processed, modified and recognised by co-evolved synthetases and mitoribosomes, and links to human disease and emerging therapies. - Conduits, Doppelgängers, and Chimeras: RNA Structures at the Virus–Host Interface
Annu Rev Virol (2025) 12(1):277–298First authorReviewdoi:10.1146/annurev-virology-100422-031237
Reviews how structured viral RNAs subvert host machinery — often by mimicking cellular RNAs (“doppelgängers”) or fusing features of several host RNAs (“chimeras”).