Welcome to the Kieft Lab
Jeff has taken a new position as the Executive Director of the New York Structural Biology Center as of May, 2023. The lab is now based at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York.
We are fascinated by RNA, the most versatile biological macromolecule. While DNA might be thought of as a ‘tape’ that stores information, and proteins as ‘shapes’ that carry out specific functions, RNA does both. This remarkable functional diversity is due to RNA’s ability to form complex 3-D structures – this is what we seek to understand. How does RNA fold into complex shapes, and what do these structures look like? What do they interact with in the cell? How does this create function? We are particularly interested in RNAs from viruses, how they relate to disease, and how we might exploit this knowledge to improve human health.
Lab News
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May 2023
Congrats to Steve for his new tenure-track assistant professor position at Rockefeller University, starting this fall
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May 2023
Congrats to Quentin for his new tenure-track assistant professor position a the University of Houston, starting this fall
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May 2023
Congrats to Sam for winning best poster prize at the Structural Biology and Biochemistry Symposium
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May 2023
Congrats to Conner for successfully defending his PhD thesis and for his new post-doc position in the labs of Jamie Cate and Jennifer Doudna at Berkeley
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April 2023
Congrats to Jillian on her new position at Genscript
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March 2023
Congrats to Matt for successfully defending his PhD thesis and for his new position at New England Biolabs, starting in June
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February 2023
Congrats to Conner for winning a poster prize at the Nucleic Acids Fusion Conference in Mexico
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December 2022
Congrats to Rachel for successfully defending her PhD thesis and for her new position at Sandia National Labs
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October 2022
Congrats to Conner and Samantha for winning best poster prizes at the Molecular Biology Retreat
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October 2022
The lab participated in the BMG department pumpkin carving contest. They were recognized with the prestigious award for “Most Ribonucleic”.
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August 2022
Congrats to Kate for receiving a T32 award
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August 2022
Congrats to Elizabeth for receiving a T32 award
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August 2022
Congratulations to Jillian who received her notice of award for her F32 this month
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August 2022
We gathered to celebrate 20 years of Jeff
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June 2022
Congratulations to Jillian for receiving the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Award for Research Excellence by an Underrepresented Scientist during the 27th Annual Meeting of the RNA Society
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June 2022
Congratulations to Elizabeth for receiving the Poster Award during the 27th Annual Meeting of the RNA Society
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May 2022
Elizabeth passed her comps!
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April 2022
Parker was recognized as the Distinguished Student of the Year at the STBB Retreat
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December 2021
Jillian was awarded the 2022 RNA Society / Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Award for Research Excellence by an Underrepresented Scientist. This award recognizes exceptional contributions to RNA science by a scientific trainee who is underrepresented in biomedical research.
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December 9, 2021
Congratulations to David for receiving the 2021 Steven Fadul Award
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October 20, 2021
Parker completed his comprehensive exam!
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September 23, 2021
Conner completed his comprehensive exam!
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September 2021
Zoe O’Donoghue has started her position as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, in USAID's Global Health Security Program, Office of Infectious Disease, Division of Emerging Threats. Have fun with that!
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September 2021
Ben Akiyama has started his new position at Meso Scale Discovery in Rockville, MD
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August 2021
Jeff Kieft has been named Chair of the NIH Molecular Structure and Function A (MSFA) study section, and was elected a Director of the RNA Society, to serve 2022-2023.
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August 2021
Jeff Kieft has been awarded a 2021 McKnight Technology Award.
Recent Publications
Bonilla SL, Kieft JS. The promise of cryo-EM to explore RNA structural dynamics. J Mol Biol. 2022 Sep 30;434(18):167802. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2022.167802. Epub 2022 Aug 29.
Bonilla SL, Vicens Q, Kieft JS. Cryo-EM reveals an entangled kinetic trap in the folding of a catalytic RNA. Sci Adv. 2022 Aug 26;8(34):eabq4144. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abq4144. Epub 2022 Aug 26.
Vicens, Q. & Kieft, J.S. Thought on how to think (and talk) about RNA structure. PNAS, 2022 April;119(17)e2112677119.
Bonilla, S.L., Vicens, Q., & Kieft, J.S. Cryo-EM reveals n entangled kinetic trap in the folding pathway of a catalytic RNA. Preprint. 2022 April.
Bonilla, S.L., Sherlock, M.E., MacFadden, A., & Kieft, J.S. A viral RNA hijacks host machinery using dynamic conformational changes of a tRNA-like structure. Science. 2021 Nov;374(6570):955-960.
Eiler, D.R., Wimberly, B.T., Bilodeau, D.Y., Rissland, O.R., Kieft, J.S. The Giardia lamblia ribosome structure reveals divergences in translation and quality control pathways. BioRxiv. [Preprint]. Available at: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.30.321331 (Cell Reports, in revision)
Franklin, A.N., MacFadden, A., Kieft, J.S., Hesselberth, J.R., & Chapman, E.G., Custom-designed, degraded-resistant messenger RNAs in yeast. BioRxiv. [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.25.169177. (RNA Biology, submitted)
Brome mosaic virus tRNA-like structure