People in Bioengineering

Su-A Myong

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Assistant Professor
Bioengineering
Institute for Genomic Biology
1206 W. Gregory Avenue
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 244-5057

Research Statement:
SARS, Avian flu and H1N1 are the recent viral strains which posed serious threat to public health worldwide. Our research effort is dedicated to investigate and improve the antiviral immunity. When a virus infects a human cell, it releases its genome to the cell's interior space called cytosol. The infected cell faces a great task of recognizing this as a foreign pathogen and mustering up immunity against it. We study the host molecules which participate in this antiviral immune pathway using single molecule fluorescence and cell imaging techniques. Recently identified key antiviral receptor is RIG-I (retinoic acid inducible gene-I) which distinguishes viral RNA by recognizing viral specific motives

Teaching Statement:
Cellular Bioengineering (BIOE 298) is about learning molecular and cellular biology and applying it to the current biomedical problems. We touch upon various biophysical, biotechnlological, pharmaceutical and biomedical development as we learn about the underlying principles of cellular biology.

Research Interests:

• Single molecule fluorescence detection of DNA and RNA interacting motor proteins
• Super resolution cell imaging of antiviral pathway mediated by RIG-I