Molecular Biology Commons^™

Activation Of Dna Damage Checkpoint Pathways During Skeletal Myoblast Differentiation And Apoptosis, Mofetoluwa Oluwasanmi, Greg Kliment, Crystal M. Weyman

Undergraduate Research Posters 2014

A subset of skeletal myoblasts undergo apoptosis rather than differentiation when cultured in differentiation media (DM: absence of growth factors). While the muscle regulatory transcription factor MyoD is known to control the process of differentiation, our lab has recently discovered that MyoD is also controlling the apoptotic process in response to culture in DM by direct up-regulation of the pro-apoptotic Bcl2 family member PUMA. We similarly discovered that MyoD plays a role in the increased expression of PUMA and apoptosis in response to the DNA damaging agent, etoposide. This led to the hypothesis that culture in DM may lead to …