Auinash Kalsotra’s laboratory focuses on answering one fundamental question in biology: How do cells produce the precise assortment of RNAs and proteins in space and time to carry out complex tissue functions? Kalsotra is particularly interested in understanding how post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms integrate with transcriptional and translational programs to ensure normal tissue development and function, why misregulation of such mechanisms results in disease, and whether researchers can leverage to prevent or reverse particular human disorders, including cancer. Kalsotra has previously demonstrated that regulated programs of alternative pre-mRNA splicing – an evolutionarily conserved mechanism to generate proteome diversity – serve an essential function in postnatal tissue development and maturation. Currently, Kalsotra and his team are investigating how and why a loss of the splicing factor results in an advanced form of fatty liver disease and cancer.
Auinash Kalsotra is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and a faculty member at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He did postdoctoral work at Baylor College of Medicine.