Presenter: Melanie A. Zimmermann

Group Members: Morelia Morel Diaz

Faculty Sponsor: Jason M. Brown

School: Salem State University

Research Area: Biological Organisms

Session: Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM, Auditorium, A62

ABSTRACT

Cilia are antenna-like structures commonly found on the outer surfaces of various types of eukaryotic cells. Cilia perform an array of functions, one being the regulation of signaling pathways. Defects in cilia can result in ciliopathies, which are diseases caused by dysfunctional cilia such as polycystic kidney disease, Joubert Syndrome and some cancers. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a single celled green alga, is used as a model organism to study growth and development of cilia because of its relatively simple research methods. Transcription factors RFX2, RFX3 and FoxJ1 regulate cilia genes in metazoans but are not encoded in the C. reinhardtii genome. While transcription factor XAP5 was identified as a regulator of a subset of genes involved in C. reinhardtii cilia assembly, additional transcription factors remain unknown. Our research focused on identifying potential transcription factors that play a role in cilia gene regulation. We employed a CRISPR-based technique, Targeted Insertional Mutagenesis (TIM) (Picariello, et al., 2020) to disrupt three potential transcription factors. These transcription factors were previously identified in literature to have been upregulated after experimentally inducing loss of cilia and during the normal cilia growth occurring during their cell cycle. Mutants of Cre02.g103450_4532 were generated and corroborated through PCR. These potential mutants were further analyzed through phenotypic assays, microscopy, and luciferase assays to determine any associated phenotypic variations.