Date of Award

1-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School

College of Science and Mathematics

Department/Program

Biology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Carlos A. Molina

Committee Member

Charles Du

Committee Member

John Gaynor

Abstract

The Inducible cyclic AMP (cAMP) Early Repressor (ICER) is an endogenous transcriptional repressor of the cAMP-mediated signaling gene transcription pathway and belongs to the CRE-binding protein (CREB)/CRE modulator (CREM) gene family. ICER is associated to many functions and biological processes in the immune system, brain, regulation of spermatogenesis, circadian control of transcription, apoptosis and metabolic functions, and of particular interest, has been shown to act like a tumor suppressor. Recent findings from our laboratory suggest that ICER might have a role in DNA repair, but further experiments need to be performed. In this research, we aimed to elucidate the function of ICER and its role in DNA repair, by first re-analyzing ICER’s DNA binding sites and genome interaction from a recently published Chromatin Immunoprecipitation - Seq dataset by Seidl et al, 2020. Then, using PCR and EMSA we empirically showed that ICER binds to some important genes thought to be involved in variety of DNA Repair pathways such as PARP1, RAD51C, XRCC6 and XRCC2, suggesting that ICER might play a role in DNA repair mechanisms. These results are important and will inform future experiments to understand ICER’s function in DNA repair.

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