IMB Seminar Series - Associate Professor Joseph (Sefi) Rosenbluh

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 05 May 2017

Time:

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

Room:

Queensland Bioscience Precinct Auditorium - Building 80, The University of Queensland

UQ Location:

Queensland Bioscience Precinct (St Lucia)

URL:

http://events.imb.uq.edu.au/seminar.php?id=1157

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Mutation leading to constitutive -catenin activity are present in nearly all colon cancers and are essential for maintaining tumour growth. However, despite large efforts we lack efficient -catenin inhibitors. We have taken an alternative approach, using genome wide RNAi and CRISPR screens to identify genes that are required for proliferation only in the context of aberrant -catenin activity. We demonstrate the utility and off target effects of each of these approaches and describe a new platform that combines different methodologies and enables identification of highly specific cell essential genes. Our work identified a transcriptional complex composed of -catenin and YAP1 that drives the expression of genes that promote cancer cell survival. Although my work is focused on -catenin driven colon cancer the same approaches could be applied as a general strategy for unbiased studies of how genes function in normal tissues and how they are deregulated in disease.