Welcome to Research Group Shcherbata!
Our lab is focused on dissecting the biological roles of miRNAs in cell differentiation and maintenance under normal, stress, and pathological conditions in the fruit fly Drosophila. We show that the miRNA-based regulatory network is accomplished via feedback-feedforward signaling, which reduces transcriptional noise and fine-tunes gene expression to regulate the entire gene expression profile. miRNAs influence cell proliferation and differentiation programs; thus, if miRNA levels are misregulated under stress or pathological states, tissue regeneration and homeostasis are severely disrupted.
In summary, we found that miRNAs act as
- Spatio-temporal cell fate determinants
- Differentiation guardians
- Stress response elements
Taken together, based on our findings, we believe that miRNAs play a role in generating biological robustness as canalization factors to buffer gene expression against perturbation or variability.
https://shcherbatalab.wordpress.com/