Session 2D: Inaugural Lectures by Associates/Fellow

Chairperson: H M Antia, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Unveiling DNA structural properties of promoter regions of prokaryotic transcriptome and their role in gene expression View Presentation

Gene expression is a fundamental biological process, in which the genetic information encoded in DNA is translated to create phenotypes. It is a multistep process, and it can be regulated at various levels such as transcription, RNA processing, translation and post-translational events. Transcription initiation is an important step of gene regulation process in prokaryotes. Promoters are a stretch of DNA sequences that are present in the upstream of transcription start sites, where RNA polymerase and other transcription factors bind to initiate the transcription. Next-generation sequencing studies have revealed that a variety of transcripts are present in the prokaryotic transcriptome. Identification and characterization of promoter regions associated with a different category of transcripts are crucial for the complete understanding of functional genomics. Promoter regions have been shown to have unique DNA structural properties compared to their flanking region, in organisms across all domains of life. In-silico analysis of DNA sequence-dependent structural properties like DNA duplex stability, protein-induced bendability and intrinsic curvature in the promoter regions of six different prokaryotic transcriptomes suggest that these features are distinctly present in the promoter regions associated with different categories of transcripts. Using these structural features, the speaker’s group predicted promoters associated with different categories of transcripts such as mRNA, internal, antisense and non-coding RNA, which constitute the prokaryotic transcriptome. Additionally, it has also been found that these DNA structural features of promoter regions are linked with the expression of the associated gene.