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Seminars, events & talks

Wednesday, 27th November, 2013, 11:00

"Alteration of alternative splicing and RNA binding proteins across multiple tumors"

Current cancer genomics projects apply high-throughput technologies to discover recurrent genetic variations in patient samples. These efforts are crucial to describe the genetic diversity of cancer and to classify into novel subtypes for improved prognosis and therapeutics. These genome-scale studies focus mostly on the detection of alterations of the DNA and the expression of genes. However, alterations in Alternative Splicing (AS), which hold important signatures that can provide novel prognostic and therapeutical strategies, have not been yet thoroughly characterized. We have used RNA sequencing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project for hundreds of tumor samples and paired normal tissues to study the splicing changes and differential expression of Splicing Factors (SFs) and RNA binding proteins (RBPs) in 13 different cancer types. We find new proteins and splicing events that are recurrently altered in tumors. Additionally, by using correlations, we detect possible association of RBPs and events, suggesting splicing regulatory modules. Our analysis indicates that different cancers present similar alterations, suggesting a general path for cells towards cancer by concurrent splicing alterations. This analysis provides useful information to elucidate the impact of alternative splicing in the functional dynamics of cell transformation in multiple cancer types and may help uncovering novel therapeutic strategies.

Speaker: Eduardo Eyras - Computacional Genomics group of GRIB (IMIM - UPF)

Room Aula (473.10)



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