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BBB seminar: Pål Sætrom

The roles of microRNAs and transcription factors in gene regulation and tissue specific expression

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Pål Sætrom
Department of Computer and Information Science, NTNU, Trondheim


MicroRNAs (miRNAs) were identified as a large group of regulatory genes in 2001, and increasing research has revealed these genes to be important in development, including differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis. Many miRNAs seem to have tissue-specific expression patterns, which suggests that together with transcription factors, miRNAs may be crucial for establishing and maintaining tissue specific gene regulation.

Most miRNAs are likely to have many target genes, but current methods have had limited success in predicting these targets – possibly because many miRNA targets are coordinately regulated by multiple miRNAs, whereas most current methods only consider one miRNA at a time. We have recently determined some of the critical factors for cooperative miRNA regulation, and in our upcoming FUGE project we will use these results to study how miRNAs and transcription factors coordinately regulate genes.

In my talk I will present our recent work on miRNA targeting, our ongoing work on miRNA regulation of uracil-DNA glycosylase, and our plans for the upcoming FUGE project.


Host: Trygve Serck-Hanssen <trygve.serck-hanssen[@]abm.uib.no>, Dept. for Basic Medicine Research, UNIFOB AS