SBASSE Biology Talk - 2016
High-Throughput Assessment of Small Open Reading Frame Translation in Drosophila Melanogaster
Guest Speaker: Dr. Ali Mumtaz
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Time: 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Venue: Smart Room, SBASSE 5th Floor, LUMS
Host: Dr. Muhammad Tariq
Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of putative small ORF (smORF) sequences are present eukaryotic genomes, and many of these map to transcripts, including putative ncRNAs. smORFs have been left out of genome annotations on the basis of their extremely high numbers and small size that hinders their bioinformatic and biochemical characterisation. Ribosome profiling or Ribo-Seq has enabled us to detect translated sequences at a genomic scale providing insight into pervasive translation outside of annotated protein coding regions. Using this technique in Drosophila S2 cells, (Aspden et al. 2014 eLife 3:e03528) we observe the translation of thousands of smORFs, which can be classified as ‘dwarf’ (around 20aa) and ‘longer’ (around 80aa). Our results corroborate the robust translation of hundreds of ‘longer’ smORFs similar to cannonical protein coding genes, but suggest a lower level, perhaps stochastic, translation of thousands of ‘dwarf’ smORFs from putative non-coding RNAs and 5’UTRs.
Biography
Dr. Ali Mumtaz completed his BSc Biotechnology from UCL (London) in 2007 after which he worked for Astra Zeneca (Cambridge) for the Protein Sciences Department. In 2010, he worked for 9 months as a Research Assistant with Dr. Muhammad Tariq at LUMS before heading to the University of Sussex for an MSc in Developmental Cell Biology. After the MSc, he was offered a Wellcome Trust funded PhD studentship in the lab of Prof J. P. Couso where he has been working on small ORF translation in Drosophila to date.
