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BBB seminar: Rein Aasland

Small domains and short motifs in transcriptional regulation

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Rein Aasland
Department of Molecular Biology & Computational Biology Unit, University of Bergen

A large proportion of proteins involved in transcriptional regulation have a modular architecture. Transcription factors typically have separate modules for DNA binding, activation and/or repression. Enzymes involved in transcription and modulation of chromatin structure have catalytic domains fretted with small domains, some of which can target them to the correct molecular context in the nucleus. Many proteins which are involved in epigenetic gene regulation have protein domains that recognise the many post-translational modifications in the nucleosomal histones allowing them to distinguish between active and inactive chromatin. Some of these small domains mediate protein-protein interactions, either with other domains or with short linear motifs. The function of many other domains in transcriptional regulators remains, however, obscure. In the seminar, I will discuss our biochemical and bioinformatical research on nucleosome-binding protein domains and short linear motifs in transcription factors and other nuclear proteins.

Rein Aasland has a PhD from University of Bergen (Laboratory of Biotechnology, 1991), on a Thesis on oncogenes and growth factors in thyroid cancer. He did post-doctoral work in the group of Francis Stewart at the Gene Expression Programme at EMBL, Heidelberg, on chromatin-based gene regulation. In 1995 he returned to Laboratory of Biotechnology, UiB, and is currently professor at the Department of Molecular Biology. His research is focused on proteins and protein domains involved in epigenetic gene regulation. Aasland has participated in the development of bioinformatics research and education at the UiB since 1990 and he is senior scientist at the Computational Biology Unit at UiB. He is partner of the ELM project which develops a bioinformatical resource for functional sites in proteins (http://elm.eu.org).
For more information, see: https://www.uib.no/en/rg/genreg