PGFI Excellence in Genomics Undergraduate Student Award

In 2008, PGFI initiated an annual undergraduate award for graduating seniors who have conducted research in genomics and have demonstrated overall academic excellence during their undergraduate careers. PGFI recognizes these meritorious junior researchers with an award of $750.

2009 Award Recipient

Boris Zinshteyn is the Penn Genome Frontiers Institute Excellence in Genomics Undergraduate Award recipient for 2009.  Boris is majoring in biochemistry, with a minor in computer and information science, and is submatriculated in the MS chemistry program.  His BA and MS degrees will be awarded in May 2009.

A Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Scholar, Boris has a grade point average of 3.79 as of his penultimate semester at Penn.  He will join the PhD program in biology at MIT in September 2009.  Boris has yet to define the area of research he will pursue for his dissertation.

Boris’ research record at Penn is impressive.  Since September 2005, Boris has been working at The Wistar Institute in Dr. Kazuko Nishikura’s gene expression and regulation laboratory.  Boris has also been closely mentored by Yukio Kawahara, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Nishikura lab, who is now a faculty member at Osaka University.

As a sophomore, Boris co-authored a Science paper, for which he was designated as having equal contribution as the first author.  In this paper, Boris and his colleagues showed that microRNAs are subject to an editing mechanism which changes the genes that they silence.  In a second paper, they demonstrated that this RNA editing mechanism has an inhibitory effect on the expression of microRNAs.  Currently, Boris is studying a newly-discovered class of RNA, called Telomeric Repeat-containing RNA (TERRA), which is transcribed from chromosome ends. 

Boris will be recognized at the School of Arts and Sciences Awards Ceremony on May 15, where he will be presented with an award of $750 from PGFI to acknowledge his scholarly accomplishments.

Boris’s papers:

• Kawahara Y, Zinshteyn B, Sethupathy P, Iizasa H, Hatzigeorgiou AG, Nishikura K. 2007 Redirection of silencing targets by adenosine-to-inosine editing of miRNAs.  Science 315(5815):1137-40.
• Kawahara Y, Zinshteyn B, Chendrimada TP, Shiekhattar R, Nishikura K. 2007. RNA editing of the microRNA-151 precursor blocks cleavage by the Dicer-TRBP complex. EMBO Rep.8(8):763-9.