“Making heads or tails of Mediator function, and how transcription start sites earn their STRIPEs”, Gabriel Zentner, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Indiana University Bloomington.
Precise transcriptional regulation is critical for diverse aspects of biology ranging from cellular differentiation to metabolic homeostasis, and transcription is frequently deregulated in human disease. We use genome-wide approaches to characterize transcriptional initiation, with a focus on Mediator, a modular complex that acts as a bridge between gene-distal regulatory elements and promoters. Our current results suggest that the overall coherence of Mediator’s modules is less important for global transcription than the integrity of the RNA polymerase II-contacting head module, and that the connection of the transcription factor-interacting tail module to the larger Mediator complex is important for limiting transcriptional activation. We also develop new techniques for global characterization of transcription. Our most recent method is Survey of TRanscription Initiation at Promoter Elements with high-throughput sequencing (STRIPE-seq), a simple, rapid, and cost-effective approach for global profiling of transcription start sites (TSSs). STRIPE-seq overcomes limitations of cost, technical difficulty, and/or input associated with current TSS mapping methods and we thus envision that it will be an attractive means by which any molecular biology lab can profile transcription initiation on a whole-transcriptome scale.
Monday November 23, 2020 at 2:30. Join by Zoom
Hosted by Dr. Sheila Teves