Professor Anton Enright

Anton has spent 25 years exploring non-coding RNAs and their impact on the transcriptome with a particular emphasis on how that might influence our understanding of disease and human health. In particular, we have strong expertise in microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs. Anton’s team are wet/dry with a computational biology background coupled with genomics and molecular biology expertise. Previous work includes one of the first microRNA target prediction algorithms (miRanda), the miRbase database, the Sylamer algorithm and multiple approaches for exploring how non-coding RNAs shape transcription. More recently, the Enright lab are focusing on RNA modifications (e.g. m6A methylation) and their impact on both microRNA binding and transcription in general using Oxford Nanopore direct RNA sequencing. Finally, we have a growing interest in exploring metagenomic data and the genomics facility has developed considerable expertise in 16S/18S sequencing coupled with shotgun metagenomics on Oxford Nanopore, more recently we are looking to explore the endometrial microbiome using these techniques.

Anton leads the departmental genomics facility at Pathology and the School of Biological Sciences Nanopore facility. This is extremely useful for experimental design and analysis for complex projects and there is an excellent team of very experienced and highly skilled genomics lab technicians.