About

Inna Afasizheva is an Associate Professor of Molecular & Cell Biology at Boston University's Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. She holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Russian Academy of Sciences, obtained in 1995, and both MS and BS degrees in Biophysics from Moscow State University, earned in 1992 and 1991 respectively. Her research program is focused on the mechanisms and regulation of mitochondrial RNA processing in Trypanosoma brucei, a unicellular parasite responsible for diseases that pose health and economic challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work emphasizes the identification of parasite-specific processes as potential drug targets, given the divergence of mitochondrial RNA processing pathways in trypanosomes from those in humans. She has contributed significantly to understanding the roles of uridine insertion/deletion mRNA editing, polyadenylation, and uridylation in mitochondrial gene expression, including the discovery of key enzymes such as RET1 terminal uridyltransferase and KPAP1 poly(A) polymerase. Her research explores the regulation of these activities, the functions of pentatricopeptide repeat RNA binding proteins in mRNA processing, and the principles of uridylation-based mRNA decay and mRNA 3’ end definition. Her approaches include biochemistry, genetics, proteomics, crystallography, deep sequencing, ribosome profiling, and bioinformatics. Her research is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Data Mining
• Biology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Programming language

Selected publications

• A toolkit to handle T-less alignment for U insertion/deletion RNA editing

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2022

  • Computer Science
  • Data Mining
  • Computer Science

  Abstract Summary In the mitochondrial genome of kinetoplastids, the targeted insertion and deletion of uridine in cryptic mRNA is essential to generate functional protein-coding mRNAs, but such process leads to a highly hetergenous and complex RNA population. Few tools were developped to perform alignment based on a T depleted strategy for such mRNA population, however to our knowledge no downstream analysis tool is available so far to allow easy data processing and interpretation. Here, we fill this gap with the T-less-Alignment-Toolkit , which provides useful functions such as duplication removal with UMI, alignment strandness analysis, statistical summary and visualization. Availability and Implementation Scripts and toolkits can be downloaded at https://gitee.com/Zhanglab/tless-alignment-toolkit

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) RNA binding proteins regulate mRNA processing in mitochondria of Trypanosoma brucei

  Journal of Microbial & Biochemical Technology · 2016-11-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• [Immunogenic properties of albeferon--biologically active artificial protein].

  PubMed · 2000-02-15 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• [Circular permutation of Thermus thermophilus ribosomal protein S6 to artificial protein albebetin topology].

  PubMed · 1998-06-10

  article
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Ruslan Aphasizhev

  Boston University

  4 shared

• Liye Zhang

  2 shared

• Fan Zhang

  Beijing Sanbo Brain Hospital

  2 shared

• Д. А. Долгих

  2 shared

• Kirpichnikov Mp

  1 shared

• Finkel'shteĭn Av

  1 shared

• Bocharov Ev

  1 shared

• Ruslan Afasizhev

  1 shared