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MSc Exit Seminar – Cassandra Marie D’Amata – Wednesday, September 27th, 2017
September 27, 2017 @ 10:10 am - 10:30 am
MSc Exit Seminar
Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 10:10 am, Ramsay Wright Building, Room 432
Cassandra Marie D’Amata (Tropepe Lab)
Characterizing the role of ice1 in maintaining zebrafish neural stem cells
Abstract:
Maintenance of neural stem cell (NSC) niches is required for the continued growth of the zebrafish retina and forebrain after embryogenesis. The zebrafish mutant kess564, which maps to the ice1 locus, exhibits reduced NSC niches. RNA polymerase II-dependent snRNA transcription requires the little elongation complex (LEC) for which ICE1 is an essential scaffolding component. Mutant NSCs which are normally active no longer express markers of cycling cells and become apoptotic. Furthermore, quiescent NSCs of the mutant retina are unable to proliferate in response to UV lesion. Whole-transcriptome analysis of ice1 mutant larvae show a downregulation of CNS and cell cycle genes, and an upregulation of splicing genes indicative of a possible compensatory mechanism. snRNA production appears to be unaffected in a subset of NSCs but reduced in differentiated neurons. This work demonstrates that ice1 is essential for NSC maintenance in an in vivo loss of function model.