Study of gene regulatory networks with interacting mRNAs and microRNAs, using a theoretical-experimental approach.

SZISCHIK CANDELA; ELSI FERRO ; CARLA BOSIA; ALEJANDRA C VENTURA

Evento Virtual

Conferencia; XLIX Reunión Anual SAB; 2021

Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica

Encoding and regulating protein expression areequally important functions of RNA molecules, and their dysfunction might causediseases. Understanding how these processes occur is critical from both a basicand applied point of view.MicroRNAs are small RNA molecules that do notcode for proteins and regulate their target, messenger RNA (mRNA), through apost-transcriptional mechanism. It is generally accepted that miRNAs repressgene expression by promoting the degradation of target mRNA and/or inhibitingits translation. From a theoretical point of view, it has beenproposed that the way miRNAs interact with their targets is through asequestration mechanism. Additionally, different species of mRNA can compete tobind to the same miRNA. Together, these mechanisms, sequestration andcompetition, are believed to create an indirect interaction between the targetmRNAs of the same miRNA, commonly called cross-talk, through which theexpression levels of the targets could influence each other. These ideas havebeen called hypotheses on the effect of competition between endogenous RNAs(ceRNAs).This project aims to characterize generegulation networks with mRNAs and interacting microRNAs, to establish theprinciples that govern this interaction and to identify emerging behaviors,with potential applicability to other networks similarly organized. Among the many aspects that could be studied inthese networks, we propose to pay special attention to the regulationoriginated in the competition for limited and shared resources and the abilityto generate responses optimal according to the temporal dynamics of the inputsreceived and the characteristics of the network.