DEPARTMENT OF MEDICAL BIOCHEMISTRY AND MICROBIOLOGY RNA interference in human cells: Viral control and medical application Göran Akusjärvi, Department of Medical Biochemistry and … … Microbiology, BMC, Uppsala University. Phone: +46 18-471 4164, e-mail: goran.akusjarvi@imbim.uu.se RNA silencing, or RNA interference (RNAi), is a sequence-specific RNA degradation mechanism that occurs in a broad range of eukaryotic organisms including fungi, plants and animals. In all these organisms, the process is triggered by double- …

Spatial organisation of genes in the nucleus Pernilla Bjerling, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, BMC, Uppsala University Tel.: 018-471 6652 or 018-471 4243, fax.: +46 18 471 4673 Pernilla.Bjerling@imbim.uu.se We are using the fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, as a model system to study organisation of the genome in the nucleus. There are a growing number of examples where sub-nuclear location influences gene activity. For example, in fission yeast it has been shown that the centromeres and telomeres are transcriptionally repressed and localised to the nuclear periphery. We are investigating the correlation between gene activity and localisation in the cell nucleus using the lacO/LacR-GFP system. In this approach lacO-arrays are integrated on the chromosome, and a LacI-GFP fusion protein is expressed in the cell. LacI-GFP will bind to the lacO repeats thereby allowing for the detection of a specific gene locus using immunofluorescence microscopy. Yeast is an excellent model system for this type of studies since the tandem arrays of the lacO sequence can be inserted at specific locus by homologous recombination and changes in localisation due to mutations can be monitored. Moreover, S. pombe is also a good model organism for chromatin studies since it shares many features of heterochromatin with higher eukaryotes. Questions that we are addressing using this technique are: 1. Does genes always have roughly the same nuclear localisation? 2. Spatial organisation of active compared to repressed genes. Will the localisation of a gene change depending on the expression status of the gene? 3. Silencing at the nuclear periphery. Is the nuclear periphery a nuclear compartment devoid of transcriptional activity? Biosynthesis of haptoglobin Erik Fries, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University Tel. 018-471 41 99, fax 018-4714673. Erik.Fries@imbim.uu.s

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