Event date:
May 17 2021 2:00 pm

Alternative splicing factor RBFOX2 regulates cancer specific splicing and oncogenic miRNA processing

Supervisor
Dr. Muhammad Afzal Dogar
Student
Zonaira Khalid
Venue
Zoom Meetings (Online)
Event
MS Thesis defense
Abstract
miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that impair protein production from target mRNAs by binding to 3’ UTRs and have an important role in many human diseases including cancer. Biogenesis of miRNAs includes a transcription of miRNA from its DNA sequences into pri-miRNA by polymerase 2 enzyme which is then processed into pre-miRNA by Drosha. This pre-miRNA is then converted into 21-22 nucleotides duplex in the cytoplasm by Dicer. This duplex is cleaved by Helicase into guide and passenger strands. There are different hypotheses about which one of them (5p and 3p strands) will become a guide strand or which one of them will become a passenger strand. Therefore, the investigation of the basic mechanism of miRNA biogenesis is necessary to design targeted therapeutics. Preliminary data of deep sequencing has shown that RBFOX2-binding changes dicer processing in the case of miR-20b thereby 5p strand acts as your guide. However, if we knockdown Rbfox2 by using siRNA, 3p strand of miRNA starts acting as your guide strand. Hence, RBFOX2 could be involved in 5 to 3p guide strand bias of pre-miR-20b and changing further mRNA targets of microRNAs. Preliminary deep sequencing data of two mock and two siRBFOX2 samples also suggested that the last G of RBFOX binding motif (GCATG) edited to A in two mock samples, however, no editing was observed in both siRBFOX2 samples. This suggests that RBFOX2 could be involved in G to A editing in pre-miR 32. To computationally validate this non-canonical G to A editing of endogenous pre-miR-32, we are using an open-source Galaxy webserver to detect the binding motif of Rbfox2 and miR-32.

https://lums-edupk.zoom.us/j/98049535107?pwd=OW9CZ0w2YXpOVVhMRGFzSFJRb3 Zldz09

Meeting ID: 980 4953 5107

Passcode: 260965