Expertise:

Infectious Diseases, Antimicrobial drug Resistance, Chromatin Biology.

Profile:

The involvement of non-genetic factors in the emergence and development of diseases has been overlooked compared to genetic mutations. It is now believed that the assessment of non-genetic changes holds great potential for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment strategies for a wide range of diseases. Bacterial infections efficiently alter the hosts epigenome and play an important role in evading host immune responses, leading to bacterial infections and, in some cases, long-term persistence, as is the case with mycobacterial infections. To this end, we seek to understand the role of non-genetic mechanisms in promoting antimicrobial drug resistance (AMR) and pathogenesis. We believe that targeting the players responsible for these non-genetic mechanisms, in combination with the already existing battery of drugs, holds great potential to combat AMR and pathogenesis.

Major Publications

• Yaseen I, White SA, Torres-Garcia S, and Allshire RC. Non-degradative post-translational processing of a heterochromatin regulator promotes anti-fungal resistance. Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. 2022 Aug;29(8):745-758. PMID: 35879419.
• Torres-Garcia S, Yaseen I, Shukla M, Audergon PNCB, White SA, Pidoux AL, Allshire RC. Epigenetic gene silencing by heterochromatin primes fungal resistance. Nature. 2020 Sep; 585(7825): 453-458. PMID: 32908306.
• Yaseen I, Choudhury M, Sritharan M, Khosla S. Histone methyltransferase SUV39H1 participates in host defense by methylating mycobacterial histone-like protein HupB. EMBO Journal. 2018 Jan 17;183-200. PMID: 29170282.
• Yaseen I, Kaur P, Nandicoori VK, Khosla S. Mycobacteria modulate host epigenetic machinery by Rv1988 methylation of a non-tail arginine of histone H3. Nature Communications. 2015 Nov 16; 6:8922. PMID: 26568365.