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Jaime
VILLEGAS Ph.D. Ph.D. Associate Scientist, Fundación Ciencia para la Vida
and Millennium Institute for Fundamental and Applied Biology.
Jaime
Villegas Ph.D. Research Associated Fundación Ciencia
Para La Vida; Assistant Professor, Universidad Andrés Bello.
Dr. Villegas is a young scientist that
performed his doctoral work with Dr. Luis Burzio. He made
the first report of the presence of a novel mitochondrial
RNA in the nucleus of mammalian cells and its relationship
with cell proliferation. After his Doctoral Thesis in 2001,
he obtained a Postdoctoral fellowship of the Millennium Institute
for Fundamental and Applied Biology. In March 2001 he was
appointed Assistant Professor at the Facultad
de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Andrés Bello.
Due his experimental work, in January 2003 he was selected
by an international committee to participate in The Royan
International Research Award in Iran and in April 2003 he
obtained a fellowship from the Foundation Biovision to participate
in the The World Life Sciences Forum in Lyon, France.
RESEARCH: Dr. Villegas is currently involved in the study of a chimeric mitochondrial
16S transcript which is found outside the mitochondria during
cell in proliferation. Tumoral proliferating cells express
principally the chimeric RNA, while the normal proliferating
cells express this RNA plus an antisense counterpart at the
same level. The treatment of tumoral cells with oligonucleotides
induces apoptosis, which indicate that it may be possible
to develop a differential experimental approximation in the
treatment of cancer.
ACADEMIC
POSITIONS: Junior Investigator at Fundación Ciencia
para la Vida.
PUBLICATIONS:
3 Publications, 2 books chapter and 1 U.S.Patent.
SELECTED
PUBLICATIONS:
A
novel chimeric mitochondrial RNA localized in the nucleus
of mouse sperm. (2000) Jaime Villegas, Ana
María Zárraga, Luis Montecinos, Enrique Werner, Mónica Brito,
Ana María Meneses and Luis O. Burzio. DNA and Cell Biology
19: 579 – 588.
A putative RNA editing from U to C in a
mouse mitochondrial transcript. (2002) Villegas, J.,
Muller,I., Arredondo, J. Pinto, R. and Burzio, L.O. Nucleic
Acid Research. 30: Nº9 1895 – 1901.
The
mitochondrial 16S rRNA is localized in the nucleus of human
sperm. (2002) Villegas, J., Araya, P., Bustos-Obregon,
E. and Burzio, L.O. Molecular Human Reproduction 8: 977 –
983
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