Iraida Sharina, PhD

Biography

After obtaining my PhD in Molecular Biology from Russian Academy of Science, I had a postdoctoral training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York under the supervision of Dr. David I. Goldman, a leading investigator in the area of methotrexate (MTX) resistance in leukemia. Following my interest in Nitric Oxide (NO) biology, I moved to UT-Health Science Center in Houston, to join the laboratory of Dr. Ferid Murad, a pioneer and leader in the NO field. Starting as Research Scientist, I progressed to the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Internal Medicine/Cardiology of UT-HSC in Houston. Since 1999, my studies were primarily focused on the mechanisms that regulate sGC activity and function. I investigated the role of transcription in sGC regulation, structure-functional relationship and mechanisms of pharmacologic regulation of the sGC enzyme, identified new splice variant of sGC and established their role in oxidative stress and the development of sGC-related pathologies. Following the observation that some of the splice variants of sGC exhibit age-dependent expression, I became interested in the effect of ageing on sGC function. Recently, I joined a multidisciplinary project on the project studying the role of oral microbiome in regulation of NO/cGMP signaling pathway in human host. These studies yielded surprising and interesting results on mutual interdependence of the composition the tongue microbiome and resting systolic blood pressure in humans.