Team:FAU Erlangen/Tour50
What will the future bring?
“We do what we must, because we can” - GLaDOS, Aperture Science
Expanding into other organisms
Our project is only at the beginning so we need more research and further experiments to validate our results. The plan was to insert YFP into different gene loci on various chromosome regions. In this way it is possible to analyze whether the position on the chromosome influences gene expression. Due to limited time we weren't able to perform experiments with several loci.
If we were to continue our work on this project after this early achievements, we would firstly try to detect the two parts of the SCATTER. Therefore, we would use westernblotting. The westernblot should either show two destinct bands for the two parts or one bigger band for the complex.
Also a study of the chromatinstructures at the promoter region could show if the effects seen in this study were due to chromatin packing or another effect.
Where do we see our project in the brightest future?
One new aspect of our project could be the use of not only deacetylases as histone modifying enzymes, but also methylases, acetylases and methyltransferases to alter the chromatin structure. In eukaryotes gene expression is controlled through conserved mechanisms.
As a consequence the introduction of molecular switches which induce SCATTER could be used to up- or downregulate a set of promoters. Following this, our construct could be used in cell culture or living organisms such as plants, mice, etc. to either knockdown or up-regulate different genes.
Helping humans
The main goal, rescuing people from the edge of death. Although it is probably still decades away, using this system might be a key in the war against cancer.
The greatest use could be in the field of oncology, since there might be a chance to down-regulate the oncogenes and up-regulate tumorsuppressor genes. For example one specific use could be for colon cancer, where APC (a tumorsuppressorgene) is mutated. APC is normally used for degradation of beta-Catenin, but in colon cancer APC is no longer functional which leads to a high amount of beta-Catenin in the tumor cells. Beta-Catenin finds its way into the nucleus where it acts as part of a transcription complex which leads to a higher gene expression. Usually this happens in most of the cancer cases, meaning that down-regulation of these mutated genes might help fight cancer.
Continuing on being creative
There are always ways of using anything for completely different ideas than previously intended. We are eager to find out, what other ways people might think of to use this system.