BIST-Dolors-Aleu-Graduate-Centre
Simona Barankova

Simona

Baránková

MMRES student at CRG and ICFO
Class 2019-2020

The Players of Reprogramming: Exploring Roles of Candidate Transcriptional Regulator FOXP4 and Structural Factor RAD21 during Reprogramming and X-reactivation

Summary

Acquisition of pluripotency is a dynamic and reversible process that takes part during the early development and can be recapitulated in vitro during induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) reprogramming (1). It is concerted by diverse interconnected mechanisms, from spatial chromatin reorganization to changes in transcriptional regulation (2). These mechanisms are acting in a hierarchical and synergistic way, ensuring that cells achieve pluripotency. Here, we aim to characterize the roles of two different players – RAD21, a member of the Cohesin complex (3) and FOXP4, a transcriptional regulator (4) – in the process of reprogramming. Making use of a wide variety of approaches, combining Auxindegron inducible degradation of target proteins, imaging, and RNA-seq analysis, we are suggesting their divergent, yet linked roles in the processes of early reprogramming and X chromosome reactivation in female mouse cells. Taken together, the results obtained in this work are opening questions and directions for future research of those genes.

Major project supervisor

Bernhard Payer
CRG

Minor project supervisor

Stefan Wieser
ICFO