Alisha “Jonesy” Jones, PhD

Dr. Alisha Jones, who goes by Jonesy, is a James Weldon Johnson Assistant Professor at New York University in the Department of Chemistry. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Michael Sattler in Munich, Germany, and earned her PhD in Chemistry in the lab of Gabriele Varani at the University of Washington. Jonesy’s research experiences as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher were centered around RNA structural biology; this helped her shape her current research interests in understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern RNA function. Her research group is particularly interested in investigating how long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are spliced and how the structures of mature transcripts influence lncRNA function (e.g., through interactions with other nucleic acids and proteins). Considering that lncRNAs are critical regulators of gene expression, the work carried out by the Jonesy research group has the potential to increase our overall knowledge regarding lncRNA function, and offers a starting point for therapeutically targeting lncRNAs when they are implicated in a disease.