Ng Group - Kinase biology

We are a molecular cell biology group with a primary interest in defining how cells respond to extrinsic and intrinsic signals to define cell function. In particular, our research is focused on intracellular kinases such as the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family that catalyze post-translational phosphorylation modifications on a diverse range of substrates, that include cytoskeletal proteins and transcription factors. These signalling mechanisms are central for initiating and maintaining the fidelity of key cellular processes such as duplication (mitosis), cell death (apoptosis) or fate specification (differentiation). Defects or disruption of these regulatory mechanisms are molecular drivers of human disease which exemplifies the importance of defining how these signalling mechanisms are assembled and orchestrated.

We are particularly interested in how dysregulated kinase signalling can contribute to birth defects associated with rare genetic disorders such as primary microcephaly and the pathology of age-related diseases such as heart failure, cancer and neurodegeneration. Our goal is to provide detailed mechanistic understanding of what goes wrong in disease at the molecular and cellular level with the expectation that this knowledge may trigger new developments or strategies for disease therapy.

Research keywords:

Intracellular Signal Transduction, Mitogen-activated protein kinases, Cytoskeleton, Tissue growth, Cell Division, Cell Survival, Cell Death and Cell Fate Specification.

Group Head

Staff

  • Dr Uda Ho

    Honorary Fellow & Research Fellow
    School of Biomedical Sciences

Students

Undergraduate students

Senglong Song

Cheng Hui Goh

Alumni

  • Dr Yvonne Yeap, Research Assistant at A*STAR, Singapore (Former Research Assistant and Lab Manager 2007-2017)
  • Teresa Tian Zhao, Research Officer at Department of Pathology, University of Melbourne (Former MSc student 2009-2010)
  • Dr Nicholas Rui Lim, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Duke-NUS, Singapore (Former Honours and PhD student 2012-2016)
  • Dr Yan Yan Yip, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Kings College London, UK (Former PhD student 2012-2015)
  • Lokugan Silva, PhD candidate at Peter McCallum Cancer Centre (Former MSc student 2013-2014)
  • Andrew Danyluk (Former Honours student (First Class) 2014)
  • Navin Mitter (Former Honours student 2016)
  • Wen Fang Ong (Former Honours student 2016)

Find out more about our research environment and how to apply to do a short or long-term research project with us.