Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SUMO-ZNHIT6-snoRNPs (ZNHIT6: a new SUMO E3 ligase regulating RNA metabolism)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2016-10-01 do 2018-09-30
The overall objective of the project was to investigate the role of ZNHIT6, a putative SUMO E3 ligase in the regulation of RNA metabolism. In particular we wanted to investigate a role for this protein in the regulation of small nucleolar RNA-protein complexes (snoRNPs) that mediate the modification of rRNA nucleotides and processing of rRNA precursors. It has been previously established that SUMO-mediated protein modifications play a crucial role in the regulation of snoRNP functions and this project would therefore expand our current understanding of this important biological process. It has a potentially wider benefit to society as snoRNAs have been shown to play a role in cancer and neurodegenerative and viral diseases.
During the fellowship, we have widened our research interest to also determine the biological role of ZNHIT6 in stem cell differentiation, due to its importance in general translation regulation. That might have numerous implications in regenerative medicine, cancer treatments, and our understanding of the role of ZNHIT6 and the wider SUMO network in early human development.
I will aim to publish all my research data in open-access journals as soon as possible. I have also decided to deposit all my proteomics data sets in PRIDE repository managed by EBI, which I believe will be a valuable resource for the research community as we have created unique and novel data sets that could give rise to interesting projects in the future. So far, I have presented my data as a poster during 2017 EMBO Conference on Ubiquitin and SUMO: From molecular mechanisms to systemwide responses in Cavtat in Croatia and during our yearly Department meetings. A paper describing the SUMO proteome of human iPS cells and how it changes during differentiation is in preparation. “Dramatic changes to the SUMO proteome during differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells”
See Figure 1. Schematic representation of the progress of the project incorporating research questions and obtained results [Figure 1 is attached to the Summary for Publication].