Life Sciences Commons^™

The Worlds Of Splicing And Chromatin Collide, J. Adam Hall, Philippe T. Georgel

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Both transcription and splicing take place in a nuclear environment which, at face value, may seem refractory to the efficiency afforded by the coupling of both processes. This environment, chromatin, was once viewed as only a passive packaging system for genetic material, with very little contribution to the variety of nuclear activities occurring within and around it. However, overwhelming evidence now points to the chromatin environment as being highly dynamic, and an active player in nuclear activities.

Novel Roles For The Transcriptional Repressor Prdm1 In Human Natural Killer Cells And Identification Of An Inhibitor Of Its Interacting Methyltransferase G9a, Matthew Adams Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The studies presented within this dissertation provide the first description of PRDM1 (also known as Blimp-1 or PRDI-BF1) function in natural killer cells. NK cells are major effectors of the innate immune response via antigen-independent cytotoxicity and link to the adaptive immune response through cytokine release. Molecular mechanisms mediating NK activation are relatively well-studied; however, much less is known about the mechanisms that restrain activation.

In the first study, the transcriptional repressor PRDM1 is shown to be a critical negative regulator of NK function. Microarray analysis was used to characterize transcriptional changes associated with cytokine-mediated activation. PRDM1 is expressed at …