Seminars and Events

Past Events

Category Seminar
Date and Time 2010-11-15 16:00 - 17:00
Venue Auditorium C1F
Speaker Manuel Irimia
Affiliation University of Barcelona, Department of Genetics
Title Stepwise Assembly of a Tissue-specific Network in the Vertebrate Brain
Poster click here to download(PDF)
Host Shigeru Kuratani
Summary Understanding the emergence of complex biological functions requires characterizing the assembly of the molecular networks underlying these functions. Nova is a splicing factor specifically expressed in vertebrate brains, where it regulates a variety of genes involved in synapse function and axon guidance. By binding to position-dependent sequence motifs in pre-mRNAs, Nova differentially inhibits or encourages the inclusion of a set of exons in neuron-expressed transcripts with respect to transcripts from the same genes expressed in non-neural tissues. We sought to investigate the origin of the vertebrate Nova network by studying, in key invertebrate species: (i) conservation of the molecular mechanism of Nova splicing regulation, (ii) conservation of central nervous system-specific developmental expression, and (iii) presence of exons and signals targeted by Nova in vertebrates. We find that brain-specific Nova network is a vertebrate novelty, and reconstruct the step-by-step emergence of this network. In addition, we find widely varied Nova expression patterns across metazoans, and particularly different tissue-specific expression in multiple lineages, suggesting parallel assembly and elaboration of Nova-regulated networks in diverse metazoans.
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