Bioinformatics Coordinator of LGFUS
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Talk Title :
Global analysis of alternative splicing events
Date / Time / Location:
Thursday April 9th, 2009 – 6:00 pm
Room 232, Leacock Building
McGill University
855 Sherbrooke Street West
Affiliation :
Laboratoire de Génomique Fonctionnelle de l’Université de Sherbrooke
Abstract :
Tremendous efforts are dedicated to identify cancer specific mutations in the genome or changes in gene expression levels. However, it is now becoming clear that these are not the only factors influencing gene function. Indeed, the vast majority of human genes can produce several proteins with distinct functions through alternative splicing of the primary gene transcript. In order to identify potential ovarian and breast cancer markers and drug targets, we examined all simple human splicing variants in the NCBI RefSeq database in a panel of 92 normal and cancer tissues. The splicing patterns were examined using a newly developed high throughput RT-PCR platform capable of performing thousands of reactions daily. Strikingly, a third of all active alternative-splicing events were able to distinguish between normal and cancer tissues.
This presentation will be focused on the bionformatics infrastructure and the various analyses used to identify and validate cancer specific splice variants using high throughput PCR-based screens.