Pathology Presents: Two New Tales from the Long-Running Mystery Series “What Does Werner Syndrome RECQ Helicase Do?”

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Speaker

Julia Sidorova, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Pathology
University of Washington

Faculty Sponsor

Ray Monnat, MD


Date & Time

September 30, 2015 at 4:30pm - 5:30pm

Location

Health Sciences Building, Room T-739


Description

Why Attend?

Two New Tales from the Long-Running Mystery Series “What Does Werner Syndrome RECQ Helicase Do?”

Understanding the biology of WRN, a RECQ helicase/exonuclease mutated in the Werner syndrome of premature aging and cancer susceptibility, has long been one of the areas of research focus in the Department of Pathology.  Since the demonstration of its helicase activity by the Loeb lab in 1997, WRN continues to be a subject of discoveries, its guises ranging from that of a homologous recombination factor, to a tumor suppressor, and to a tumor enabler. Using our technology of visualizing individual DNA fibers from human cells (maRTA), we have provided one of the direct demonstrations that WRN is involved in supporting replication fork progression during a normal S phase and under conditions of nucleotide depletion, which may be relatively common in replicating cancer cells. We followed up these findings with an siRNA screen, and uncovered novel functional interactions of WRN with the histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) and BRCA1 genes. This seminar will discuss these interactions and their biological and translational significance.