Graduate Student
Email: monirem@clemson.edu
Monireh Mohammadpanah
Biosketch
Monireh received her B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Shahid Chamran University and her M.S. in Molecular Genetics from Yazd University, Iran. Her master’s research focused on the epigenetic regulation of inflammatory genes in patients with coronary atherosclerosis. She also designed and optimized liposomal nanocarriers for drug delivery applications in breast cancer. In January 2022, she joined the lab of Dr. Andrei Alexandrov at the Clemson Center for Human Genetics as a Ph.D. student in Genetics. Her doctoral research focuses on developing and applying high-throughput forward genetic approaches to identify pathways involved in human RNA processing and surveillance.
Research
In Dr. Alexandrov’s lab, she identified and studied components of disease-associated human pathways involved in RNA biogenesis, regulation, and surveillance using biochemical approaches, high-throughput forward genetics, functional genomics, CRISPR-based approaches, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Her research focuses on cancer-associated human RNA pathways, specifically the regulation of the human cancer-associated nuclear long non-coding RNA Metastasis-Associated Lung Adenocarcinoma Transcript 1 (MALAT1).
She has developed novel approaches, such as Mirror and iterative screening of genome-wide guide RNA omission libraries, which enabled her to identify novel components of human pathways acting on the long non-coding RNA MALAT1, as well as the RNase MRP and RNase P control (RMPPc) pathway. The RMPPc pathway controls non-canonical 3′-end processing of the lncRNAs MALAT1 and MEN-β, post-transcriptional processing of internal transcribed spacers in pre-rRNA, and processing of 5′ leader sequences in pre-tRNA.
She is also one of the inventors on the U.S. patent, “Bacteria-Free Approach for Expressing Nucleic Acids and Proteins in Eukaryotic Cells.”
Publications
TRNAU1AP and PRPF39 Establish Integrated Control over Processing of Most Abundant Human Non-coding RNAs. Nature Communications, 2026. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74036-6
Identification of Human Pathways Acting on Nuclear Non-Coding RNAs Using the Mirror Forward Genetic Approach. Nature Communications, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59998-3
Identification of RMP24 and RMP64, Human Ribonuclease MRP-Specific Protein Components. Cell Reports, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2025.115752
Bacteria-Free Approach for Expressing Nucleic Acids and Proteins in Eukaryotic Cells. U.S. Patent Application US20250163437A1, 2024. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20250163437A1/en
Regulatory and Non-Coding RNAs meeting, Cold Spring Harbor, NY (April 2026).
Panah et al., “TRNAU1AP and PRPF39 Establish Integrated Control over Processing of Most Abundant Human Non-coding RNAs.”
3rd Annual RNA Symposium, University of California Riverside, CA (October 2025).
Panah et al., “Integrated Control of Human RNase P and RNase MRP (RMPPc) Identified by Genome-wide Screening” (best poster award).
The 15th Eukaryotic mRNA Processing meeting, Cold Spring Harbor, NY (August 2025).
Panah et al., “Identification of Pathway-Specific Surfaces in Human RNA Exosome Using Deep Mutational Scanning.
The 30th Annual Meeting of the RNA Society, San Diego, CA (May 2025).
Panah et al., “Identification of Pathway-Specific Surfaces in Human RNA Exosome Using Deep Mutational Scanning.