Identification of the role of A-to-I editing in SINE RNA stability

SINE RNAs are non-coding RNAs produced by Short Interspersed Nuclear Elements (SINEs), with SINEs of the B2 and Alu family being among the most frequent in mice and humans, respectively. Previous studies have shown that the processing of B2 SINE RNAs results in changes to the cellular stress response in mice through changes in the activation of stress response genes that are targeted by B2 RNAs. Thus, SINE RNA stability plays an important role in the regulation of gene expression. However, the factors that affect this processing are unclear. In this thesis, I investigated whether adenosine to inosine RNA modifications affects the stability of the B2 SINE RNA. To this end, optimization of solid phase RNA synthesis protocols for long RNAs that can incorporate the addition of inosines into the RNA sequence to generate in vitro synthesized B2 SINE RNA fragments with specific adenosine to inosine edits. In combination with ligation, complete in vitro synthesized B2 SINE RNAs were edited at specific positions and their processing rates could be compared to control synthesized B2 SINE RNA. Subsequently, expanded research into a cell culture model of neural cells and investigated how inhibition of A to I editing affects B2 RNA stability. The above study shows that A to I editing indeed affects the stability of the B2 SINE RNAs, and provides new insight into the mechanisms that affect overall SINE RNA stability

Authors

• Turner, Cody R.
• University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science

• NcRNA
• SINE RNA
• A to I
• A-to-I editing
• B2 RNA

Identifier

hdl:10133/6354

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:opus.uleth.ca:10133/6354