Unterschungen zur Bestimmung der Links-/Rechts-Asymmetrie regulierenden genetischen Netzwerke im Nervensystem des Nematoden Caenorhabditis elegans

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Baris Tursun
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Kognitive, systemische und Verhaltensneurobiologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2006 bis 2009
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 35265452

The overall structural organization of the nervous system is mostly bilaterally symmetric. However, deviations from this left/right (L/R) symmetry are observed in the form of, for example, different patterns of gene expression in otherwise symmetrical structures. In C. elegans, an interesting example of asymmetric gene expression is found in the chemosensory neurons ASEL and ASER, which express a set of putative chemoreceptors in a left/right asymmetric manner. Asymmetric expression of chemoreceptors endows C. elegans with the ability to discriminate between distinct chemosensory cues. Several transcription factors have been shown by my host laboratory to control asymmetric expression of these chemoreceptors. The aim of my project is to further dissect the gene regulatory networks and describe the motifs of regulation that control the L/R asymmetries observed in the ASE neurons of C. elegans. I will investigate the molecular basics of how the previously identified transcription factors and those that will be discovered from my biochemical investigations act to establish ASEL/R asymmetry. In a genome wide large scale approach, I will discover new target genes of the asymmetry regulating factors by ChIP assays combined with microarray analysis. Since epigenetic regulation of gene transcription is of crucial importance for determining cell fate specification I will also investigate the role of chromatin modification in establishing ASE L/R asymmetry. The identification of neural asymmetry-controlling mechanisms will provide major insights into brain patterning in general.

• DFG-Verfahren: Forschungsstipendien
• Internationaler Bezug: USA
• Gastgeber: Professor Dr. Oliver Hobert