Photo credit score: Courtesy of TAMEST (Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology)
DALLAS – Dec. 11, 2025 – Yunsun Nam, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, will receive the 2026 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Biological Sciences from the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology (TAMEST) for her analysis into how RNAs and proteins work together on the molecular stage. Her work has make clear gene regulation, most cancers biology, and RNA-based therapeutics.
TAMEST presents annual awards to acknowledge the achievements of early-career Texas investigators within the fields of science, drugs, engineering, and technological innovation. The O’Donnell Award comes with a $25,000 honorarium and an invite to make a presentation earlier than lots of of TAMEST members. Dr. Nam is the 18th scientist at UT Southwestern to be honored with an O’Donnell Award since TAMEST launched the awards in 2006 and is one among 5 Texas-based researchers receiving the award this 12 months.
Watch the TAMEST video about Dr. Nam
“I am grateful for this award because recognition like this keeps encouraging us to aim high and keep challenging ourselves,” stated Dr. Nam, who holds the Doris and Bryan Wildenthal Distinguished Chair in Medical Science. She can also be a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and an Investigator within the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.
Only an estimated 2% of the human genome codes for proteins. Most of the genome remains to be transcribed into RNAs, lots of which operate as noncoding RNAs that play essential roles in gene regulation. The Nam Lab is especially excited about a household of noncoding RNAs referred to as microRNAs that modulate messenger RNA (mRNA) translation and play key roles in ailments together with most cancers. Using cutting-edge biochemistry and structural biology strategies, Dr. Nam and her colleagues have produced a wealth of insights into how microRNAs are processed in cells, modified with chemical teams, and reworked by totally different proteins to exert their results.
Using cryo-electron microscopy, which permits scientists to picture molecules at atomic decision, the group decided the core construction of the Microprocessor protein complicated, the processing enzyme that produces microRNAs by cleaving longer RNA items. Their analysis confirmed that this complicated acknowledges the place to minimize RNA based mostly on structural motifs discovered within the longer segments, reasonably than particular RNA sequences as some researchers had assumed.
Their analysis additionally extends to different courses of protein enzymes that act on RNAs, resembling RNA modification enzymes. They discovered that structural motifs decide the place the METTL1-WDR4 protein complicated locations chemical modifications to regulate the steadiness and performance of switch RNAs. In distinction, their work on the METTL3-METTL14 complicated confirmed that some proteins decide the place to chemically modify mRNAs by way of sequence recognition.
Chemical modification carried out by each complexes has been discovered to go awry in numerous cancers, Dr. Nam defined, suggesting these complexes and their interactions with RNA might ultimately function targets for novel most cancers therapies.
“Yunsun is a rising star in the study of RNA-protein interactions,” stated Yuh Min Chook, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology and Biophysics at UTSW and recipient of the 2015 O’Donnell Award in Biological Sciences, who nominated Dr. Nam for her O’Donnell Award. “Her work on how proteins modify RNAs is very much basic science, and yet when these modification processes go awry, they lead to diseases like cancer and developmental disorders. The work in the Nam Lab thus provides a unique foundation for development of therapeutics to target these diseases.”
Dr. Nam got here to UTSW in 2013, supported by a recruitment grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Born in Korea and raised in Indonesia, she was impressed to develop into a scientist at 8 years previous after studying a biography of Marie Curie she had borrowed from the library. She adopted her dream to Harvard University, the place she earned an undergraduate diploma in biochemical sciences and a doctoral diploma in organic chemistry and molecular pharmacology, and continued on for postdoctoral fellowships. She grew to become excited about noncoding RNAs whereas engaged on her final postdoctoral analysis venture, the place she studied RNA recognition by Lin28, a stem cell issue and an oncogene.
The Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards acknowledge rising star Texas researchers who’re addressing the important position science and know-how play in society and whose work meets the very best requirements of exemplary skilled efficiency, creativity, and resourcefulness. The Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards are made attainable by the O’Donnell Awards Endowment Fund, established in 2005 by way of the beneficiant help of a number of people and organizations.
This 12 months’s recipients can be honored on the 2026 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards Ceremony on Feb. 3 and can current their analysis on the TAMEST 2026 Annual Conference: Pioneering Climate Innovations on the Kimpton Santo Hotel in San Antonio.
“The Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards have shone a spotlight on Texas’ brightest emerging researchers who are pushing the boundaries of science and technology for the past 20 years,” stated Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards Committee Chair Margaret A. Goodell, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. “Each year, these awards celebrate not only exceptional individual achievement but also the profound impact that innovative research has on communities, industries, and our future. It is inspiring to witness the next generation of trailblazers making Texas a global leader in transformative discovery.”
Dr. Nam is a Southwestern Medical Foundation Scholar in Biomedical Research and a UT Southwestern Presidential Scholar. Dr. Chook holds the Alfred and Mabel Gilman Chair in Molecular Pharmacology, is a Eugene McDermott Scholar in Biomedical Research, and is a member of Simmons Cancer Center.
About UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern, one of many nation’s premier tutorial medical facilities, integrates pioneering biomedical analysis with distinctive medical care and schooling. The establishment’s school members have obtained six Nobel Prizes and embody 24 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 13 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time school of greater than 3,200 is accountable for groundbreaking medical advances and is dedicated to translating science-driven analysis shortly to new medical therapies. UT Southwestern physicians present care in additional than 80 specialties to greater than 140,000 hospitalized sufferers, greater than 360,000 emergency room circumstances, and oversee practically 5.1 million outpatient visits a 12 months.