Cancer Institute Seminar Series - Dr Konstantina Skourti-Stathaki

Hosted by Prof Richard Jenner

The high fidelity of transcriptional programs in each cell type ensures organism development, homeostasis and survival. Notably, the immediate product of protein-coding gene expression, its own nascent pre-mRNA, can also regulate the transcriptional process. Nascent pre-mRNA may hybridise with the DNA template strand, leaving the non-template strand single-stranded. These structures are called R-loops and are a natural outcome of transcription. Even though persistent and uncontrolled formation of R-loops can have potentially deleterious effects on genome integrity and cellular fitness, lately an increasing body of evidence places R-loops as potential regulators of gene expression. We have previously shown that R-loops form over transcription termination regions in mammalian cells to promote efficient termination1 via the RNAi-dependent formation of repressive chromatin marks2. In mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs), R-loops form at Polycomb-repressed developmental regulator genes, and by so doing enhance their silenced state3. This talk will discuss work over the last years to understand the function and regulation of R-loops, in the light of identifying new angles to characterize mechanisms that control gene expression and genome integrity.

A light lunch will be served after the seminar. This seminar has been sponsored in part by the Biomedical Research Centre and Cancer Research UK.