Presentation Time: 3:10-3:30
Home University: UNC-Chapel Hill
Research Mentor: Jesse Raab, Genetics
Program: SMART
Research Title: The effect of losing a transcription factor on chromatin remodeling complexes
SWI/SNF is a nucleosome remodeling complex that is found in all cells of the body. SWI/SNF plays a crucial role in changing nucleosome spacing and thus allowing transcription to be carried on. In addition, they have tumor suppression activity where it was found that in many cancer cell lines, lack of their expression from a gene mutation that often involves the SWI/SNF complex. Multiple variations of the complex can be assembled based on the inclusion of different subunits, but how these complexes assemble and are targeted to different genes is unknown. ARID1B defines one such variant form of the SWI/SNF complex. The lab has identified an interaction between TEAD4, a transcription factor, and ARID1B, For this project, we hypothesized that in the absence of TEAD4, ARID1B will not be recruited and enhancer activity will change. To investigate this topic, we used CRISPR technology to knockout TEAD4 and see how their loss affects ARID1B binding to the genome, gene expression, and eventually chromatin modifications at target genes.