Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences
Lab Website
Mechanisms of RNA-mediated genomic stability and instability
Friday, March 8, 2019
12 PM
RRI 101Abstract: Can genetic information flow from RNA to DNA in a more general fashion than anticipated? We uncovered that RNA serves as template to repair DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in budding yeast. We found that transfer of genetic information from RNA to DNA occurs with an endogenous generic transcript, and is thus a more common mechanism than previously anticipated. Our results suggest that transcript RNA, like non-coding RNA, may have a significant role in genome stability and genome modification, much more prominent than previously anticipated.
DNA is heavily ‘contaminated’ with RNA! We recently developed a technique, ribose-seq, to map ribonucleotides (rNMPs) present in genomic DNA. We have also implemented a new software, Ribose-Map, as an easy bioinformatics toolkit for the analysis of ribose-seq data. In studies using genomic DNA from yeast cells, we found that rNMPs are widespread but not randomly distributed in nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. We revealed specific strand bias incorporation and hotspots. By exploring the location and distribution of rNMPs in DNA of many cell types, we may begin to understand the role that rNMPs play in genome instability and, ultimately, disease.
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