BtBs seminar - Searching for Safe Harbors Throughout a Turbulent Genome: Lessons, Challenges, and Insights from the Budding Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

James T. Arnone, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences Le Moyne College; Syracuse, New York; U.S.A.

Genome organization and chromatin maintenance can exert position effects influencing gene expression within (and across) a genomic locus. Initial characterizations of this phenomenon came from the discovery that reporter genes integrated adjacent to heterochromatic regions are silenced by mechanisms coined the ‘Telomere Proximal Effect’ and ‘Position Effect Variegation’, both of
which are widely conserved throughout eukaryotes. Our current understanding of the spatial effects influencing gene expression throughout a given locus at the local level is that they vary widely. Genome wide screening of position effects on gene expression has revealed significant
variance in the levels of expression for identical reporter constructs, based on their integration site, that occurs on a locus-by-locus basis. As the number of tools available expands to allow for increasingly complex targeted changes to the genome to be performed, so has the need to understand these spatial effects and identify ‘safe harbors’ – genomic regions that have a minimal effect on the disruption of gene expression that may serve as suitable sites for targeted integration. My research group focuses on understanding these effects using the single-cell eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae, studying both the normal interactions that balance gene expression as well as the consequences that can occur following genomic modification.

Host: Marina Vai

The seminar is OPEN to all.

for information:  infobtbs@unimib.it

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