Miller Lab RNAseq Analysis
Dr. Stephen Miller, Department of Biological Sciences.
The Volvox carteri somatic regenerator (regA) gene encodes a putative transcription factor that is expressed only in somatic cells and is essential for maintenance of the somatic cell fate. rlsA is one of the closest paralogs of regA and its spatial and temporal expression patterns are very similar to that of regA, suggesting that this gene might also function in somatic cell development. To test this idea, we used CRISPR to generate an early frameshift mutation in rlsA that eliminates rlsA function. We are conducting RNA-seq analysis of the mutant to investigate the possibility of genetic compensation, and to better understand the role of rlsA in regulating the expression of other genes. Sequence reads have been obtained for the wild type and rlsA mutant and an RNAseq pipeline will be used to map the reads to an assembled V. carteri genome then determine the statistical significance of DEGs in different gene functional classes.