Functional analysis of the DNA region contributing to higher structure formation of chromosome

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K15076
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: General medical chemistry
• Research Institution: Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: Kondo Takashi 公益財団法人神奈川科学技術アカデミー, 未病改善食品評価法開発プロジェクト, 研究員 (40333299)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ゲノム医化学 / 染色体立体配座 / 遺伝子発現制御 / 個体発生 / Meis2遺伝子座 / マウス

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Recent studies suggest that three dimensional structures of chromosomes have important roles in transcriptional regulation or chromosomal replication, however, the mechanisms underlying forming chromosomal three dimensional structures remains unknown. In this work, we made attempt to understand the function of the DNA sequence that we found in a distance of 500 kb from Meis2 promoter and interacting to Meis2 promoter regardless of the transcriptional activity of Meis2.
We tried and succeeded to establish conditional knockout ES cells and mouse line in this funding period. We also found that this DNA region has impact to transcription activities of Meis2 promoter by the conditional deletion of this DNA region. This transcriptional pattern alterations are very complex and out of expectations, and thus the DNA region reveals that it is not simple enhancer sequence. And also, preliminary results suggest that entire knockout homozygotes are lethal in the very early stages (blastocyst?).

Free Research Field

医師薬学、分子発生学