Regulation and Function of Alternative Polyadenylation and Alternative Splicing in the D.melanogaster Nervous System
Loading...
Authors
Eggleston, Lauryn V.
Issue Date
2020
Type
Thesis
Language
Keywords
alternative polyadenylation , alternative splicing , Calmodulin , nervous system , post-transcriptional , RNA-sequencing
Alternative Title
Abstract
It is estimated more than half of genes in Drosophila are subject to alternative polyadenylation (APA) generating mRNAs with short and long 3’UTRs. Although it has been identified that neural tissues show enrichment for long 3’UTRs, the functions of these isoforms remain largely unknown. Here we employ CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing and shRNA mediated knockdown to abrogate endogenous 3’UTR extensions for one gene which demonstrates neural APA that is conserved across species, the Drosophila gene calmodulin (cam) in order to evaluate the neural functions of extended 3’UTR isoforms. In the gene Dscam1 we previously identified a novel function of the 3’UTR in regulating upstream alternative splicing (AS) decisions, and we have identified similar coordination of AS in 23% of genes that undergo APA during Drosophila embryogenesis. Here we investigate the function of neural APA in a specific gene and further explore the pervasiveness of coupling neural APA with AS.