Periodic Reporting for period 4 - BURSTREG (Single-molecule visualization of transcription dynamics to understand regulatory mechanisms of transcriptional bursting and its effects on cellular fitness)
Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2022-12-31
Expression variation of a gene is affected by bursting, as changing the duration and the rate of switching between periods of activity and inactivity directly changes its cell-to-cell variation. However, even though transcriptional bursting is conserved from bacteria to yeast to human cells, the origin and regulators of bursting remain largely unknown. In this project, we aim to understand how regulatory DNA sequences and regulatory factors control bursting. In addition, we examine the effect of different bursting patterns on fitness. Overall our project will give unprecedented insight into the mechanism and function of gene expression heterogeneity, which may reveal important insight into how tumors may utilize this to select for heterogeneity.