Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting| Santa Cruz 2018

Genome Biophysics: Integrating Genomics and Biophysics to Understand Structural and Functional Aspects of Genomes

Tuesday Speaker Abstracts

Nuclear Organization and Transcription Regulation Mechanisms Studied by Live Cell Imaging Xavier Darzacq 1 1 Division of Genetics, Genomics & Development, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA While the vast majority of the molecules involved in transcription regulation are known and the reaction can be reconstituted in vitro from purified components, the basic rules governing transcription regulation remain poorly understood. Transcription initiation is very inefficient in vitro, and our goal is to understand how cells exploit the spatial organization of the nucleus to increase the rate of this reaction. Studying the heterogeneity in nuclear distribution of RNA polymerase and other essential transcription factors we seek to understand how nuclear organization can act on transcription regulation. Local nucleoplasmic protein accumulations, which we call hubs, are enriched in various transcription factors by interactions mediated by intrinsically disordered protein domains such at the C-terminal domain of the RNA polymerase II catalytic subunit. I will discuss how local polymerase hubs are regulated and how they affect the dynamics and kinetics of their constituent proteins. Also, I will discuss our attempts to reconstitute artificial activation hubs and visualize their effect on single-molecule transcription in vitro.

Bottom-up Physical Modelling for CRISPR//Cas Target Prediction

Martin Depken Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

No Abstract

RNA-programmed Genome Rearrangement in the Ciliate Oxytricha

Laura Landweber Columbia University, USA

No Abstract

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