Rate My Professor Eric Miska

Professor Eric Miska, Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics, heads the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow and College Lecturer in Molecular Biology at St John’s College. Holding a BA and PhD, he also serves as Deputy Head of School for Estate Strategy in the School of the Biological Sciences, Associate Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust/CRUK Gurdon Institute, and Associate Faculty Member at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Miska is a Wellcome Senior Investigator and Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow. Among his major awards and honors are Fellowship of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and the British Society for Cell Biology Hooke Medal awarded in 2013.

Eric Miska’s laboratory investigates gene regulation by non-coding RNAs, epigenetics, inheritance mechanisms, and genome stability. Current research themes encompass miRNA biology and pathology, miRNA mechanisms, piRNA biology and the germline, endo-siRNAs in epigenetic inheritance and environmental conditioning, small RNA evolution, and the role of RNAi in host-pathogen interactions. A pioneer in the field, Miska conducted the first genome-wide analyses of microRNAs in animals and discovered the piRNA pathway in C. elegans that silences transposons in the germline. His group demonstrated that piRNAs and RNAi pathways can establish multigenerational epigenetic memory in animals. Using C. elegans as a model host-pathogen system, they identified TUTases—RNA uridyltransferases that restrict RNA virus replication—and developed technologies to map RNA structure and RNA-RNA interactions in living cells, applied to viruses like Zika and SARS-CoV-2. Miska is a co-founder of STORM Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering RNA modification-targeted therapies for cancer. Key publications include “MicroRNA expression profiles classify human cancers” (Nature, 2005), “MicroRNA expression in zebrafish embryonic development” (Science, 2005), “piRNAs can trigger a multigenerational epigenetic memory in the germline of C. elegans” (Cell, 2012), and “The Short- and Long-Range RNA–RNA Interactome of SARS-CoV-2” (Molecular Cell, 2020). With over 53,000 citations on Google Scholar, his research has profoundly influenced RNA biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary genetics.