東北大脳科学GCOE Topics

2012-02-16: イベント
東北大学脳科学GCOEセミナー（Davide De Pietri Tonelli, Ph.D. 3/8)開催のお知らせ

■日時　2012年 3月8日（木）17:40～18:40
■会場　星陵キャンパス・1号館大会議室
■演者　Davide De Pietri Tonelli, Ph.D.（Department of Neuroscience and Brain Technologies, Italian）　　

■演題　An integrated approach for the investigation of microRNAs in vivo.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that exert their functions by silencing, mostly at the post-transcriptional level, specific mRNAs (i.e. “targets”). MiRNAs are rapidly emerging as a new layer of regulation of virtually all biological pathways. In order to better understand the role of miRNAs in complex processes, such as neocortical development, it is of strong interest to develop enabling technologies to detect and monitor miRNA expression in vivo. Moreover, most of the protein-coding genes are predicted targets of miRNAs (>60%), but the vast majority of them still await experimental validation. Therefore the identification and validation of miRNA targets is of a paramount importance to understand the role of these tiny RNAs.

Here, we have developed new approaches to detect and monitor miRNA expression in vivo. We then used a combination of genome-wide profiling and in vivo validation to identify and validate novel targets of miRNAs. As a proof of concept, here I will show unpublished results that we obtained in developing mouse neocortex. This approach however, could be easily applied to many other tissues, organs and animal models.