Karen Sarkisyan

About me

Experience:

2021 -

Present

Programme Leader Track (MRC LMS)

2019 -

Co-founder of Light Bio

2018 -

2021

Career Development Award (MRC LMS)

2016 -

2018

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (CRG, Spain & ISTA, Austria)

2011 -

2015

PhD in Molecular Biology (Moscow State University, Russia)

2006 -

2011

MSc in Biochemistry (Moscow State University, Russia)

Research focus:

Our lab works on protein, pathway and organism engineering. We create tools that help us understand biology and design organisms with new traits. In our previous work, we developed organisms that glow in the dark and report their physiology with light. We also experimentally studied structure-function relashionship in various proteins, and applied this to evolutionary biology and protein engineering. Our current focus is on proteins for clinical and agricultural applications.

My Research

Synthetic biology

We create tools that help us understand biology and design organisms with new traits.

VIEW MY RESEARCH GROUP

Selected publications

Shakhova, E. S., Karataeva, T. A., Markina, N. M., Mitiouchkina, T., Palkina, K. A., Perfilov, M. M., Wood, M. G., Hoang, T. T., Hall, M. P., Fakhranurova, L. I., Alekberova, A. E., Malyshevskaia, A. K., Gorbachev, D. A., Bugaeva, E. N., Pletneva, L. K., Babenko, V. V., Boldyreva, D. I., Gorokhovatsky, A. Y., Balakireva, A. V., . . . Mishin, A. S. (2024). An improved pathway for autonomous bioluminescence imaging in eukaryotes. Nature Methods. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-02152-y

Palkina, K. A., Karataeva, T. A., Perfilov, M. M., Fakhranurova, L. I., Markina, N. M., Somermeyer, L. G., Garcia-Perez, E., Vazquez-Vilar, M., Rodriguez-Rodriguez, M., Vazquez-Vilriales, V., Shakhova, E. S., Mitiouchkina, T., Belozerova, O. A., Kovalchuk, S. I., Alekberova, A., Malyshevskaia, A. K., Bugaeva, E. N., Guglya, E. B., Balakireva, A., . . . Sarkisyan, K. S. (2024). A hybrid pathway for self-sustained luminescence. Science Advances, 10(10). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk1992

Somermeyer, L. G., Fleiss, A., Mishin, A. S., Bozhanova, N. G., Igolkina, A. A., Meiler, J., Pujol, M. A., Putintseva, E. V., Sarkisyan, K. S., & Kondrashov, F. A. (2022). Heterogeneity of the GFP fitness landscape and data-driven protein design. eLife, 11. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.75842

Mitiouchkina, T., Mishin, A. S., Somermeyer, L. G., Markina, N. M., Chepurnyh, T. V., Guglya, E. B., Karataeva, T. A., Palkina, K. A., Shakhova, E. S., Fakhranurova, L. I., Chekova, S. V., Tsarkova, A. S., Golubev, Y. V., Negrebetsky, V. V., Dolgushin, S. A., Shalaev, P. V., Shlykov, D., Melnik, O. A., Shipunova, V. O., . . . Sarkisyan, K. S. (2020). Plants with genetically encoded autoluminescence. Nature Biotechnology, 38(8), 944–946. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0500-9

Ding, S. S., Romenskyy, M., Sarkisyan, K. S., & Brown, A. E. X. (2020). Measuring Caenorhabditis elegans Spatial Foraging and Food Intake Using Bioluminescent Bacteria. Genetics, 214(3), 577–587. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.119.302804

Kotlobay, A. A., Sarkisyan, K. S., Mokrushina, Y. A., Marcet-Houben, M., Serebrovskaya, E. O., Markina, N. M., Somermeyer, L. G., Gorokhovatsky, A. Y., Vvedensky, A., Purtov, K. V., Petushkov, V. N., Rodionova, N. S., Chepurnyh, T. V., Fakhranurova, L. I., Guglya, E. B., Ziganshin, R., Tsarkova, A. S., Kaskova, Z. M., Shender, V., . . . Yampolsky, I. V. (2018). Genetically encodable bioluminescent system from fungi. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(50), 12728–12732. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803615115

Sarkisyan, K. S., Bolotin, D. A., Meer, M. V., Usmanova, D. R., Mishin, A. S., Sharonov, G. V., Ivankov, D. N., Bozhanova, N. G., Baranov, M. S., Soylemez, O., Bogatyreva, N. S., Vlasov, P. K., Egorov, E. S., Logacheva, M. D., Kondrashov, A. S., Chudakov, D. M., Putintseva, E. V., Mamedov, I. Z., Tawfik, D. S., . . . Kondrashov, F. A. (2016). Local fitness landscape of the green fluorescent protein. Nature, 533(7603), 397–401. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17995

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