Linfeng Huang

Prof. Huang is passionate about pursuing fundamental questions in RNA biology and firmly believes such knowledge can be exploited to create powerful RNA-based biotechnology and therapeutics. His research is mainly in the RNA interference (RNAi) field. Recently he discovered a species of bacterial small RNAs which is similar to eukaryotic small interfering RNA (siRNA). Those bacterial small RNAs, named pro-siRNAs (for prokaryotic siRNAs), were stabilized by ectopic expression of p19, a plant viral siRNA binding protein. Based on this discovery, he invented a technology of producing gene specific and highly efficient ‘recombinant’ siRNAs in bacteria.
Currently, Prof. Huang’s research focuses on developing pro-siRNA-based RNAi technology and using high-throughput RNAi screen to study human diseases.