Biology subjects

Parsa, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Parsa, S..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Variant scoring performance across selection regimes depends on variant-to-gene and gene-to-disease components

Variant scoring methods (VSMs) aid in the interpretation of coding mutations and their potential impact on health, but their evaluation in the context of human genetics applications remains inconsistent. Here, we describe GeneticsGym, a systematic approach to evaluating the real-world impact of VSMs on human genetic analysis. We show that the relative performance of VSMs varies across regimes of natural selection, and that both variant-to-gene and gene-to-disease components contribute.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2024

5UTR translational inhibition of neuroblastoma dependency factors using the CR-1-31-B rocaglate

Current therapies for neuroblastoma are often ineffective and survivors suffer from severe long-term therapy related side-effects, underscoring the need for identification of novel drugging strategies. We performed an in-depth evaluation of phenotypic and molecular responses following exposure of neuroblastoma cells to the rocaglate CR-1-31-B, scrutinizing its mode-of-action through integrative ribosome footprinting and shotgun proteome profiling. We could show that CR-1-31-B significantly reduces tumor growth in vivo without apparent toxicity. By means of combined ribosome footprinting and transcriptome analysis we uncovered that CR-1-31-B treatment downregulates translation efficiencies of several major neuroblastoma dependencies including MYCN, CCND1 and ALK as well as factors involved in the G2/M checkpoint. Upregulated targets are enriched for oxidative phosphorylation pathway components and DNA repair. At the proteome level, CR-1-31-B imposed downregulation of a FOXM1 driven signature, including the FOXM1 target gene TPX2. We show that neuroblastoma cells are dependent on TPX2 for growth and DNA repair and further demonstrate enhanced CHK1 sensitivity upon TPX2 knockdown. Next, we also observed synergistic effects of CHK1 inhibition with CR-1-31-B. In conclusion, our data support CR-1-31-B as a potent novel therapeutic agent in neuroblastoma, in particular in combination with DNA damage or replication stress inducing agents.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Differential expression of Nanog 3UTR and coding region mRNA components defines an embryonic stem cell niche

Differential expression of mRNA coding sequences (CDSs) and 3untranslated regions (UTRs) is widespread, yet whether these domains contribute independently to cellular function remains unclear. Here, using Nanog as a model, we find that Nanog mRNA domain usage is spatially organized in mouse and human pluripotent cells and in the blastocyst, with cells enriched in 3UTR transcripts marking colony borders and cells enriched for the Nanog CDS located interior. Functional perturbation reveals a marked asymmetry between mRNA domains. Loss of the Nanog 3UTR leads to defects in colony architecture, cell spreading and morphogenetic behavior, accompanied by decreased extracellular matrix modeling gene expression and ROCK dependent cytoskeletal organization. In contrast, deletion of the Nanog CDS primarily disrupts epithelial polarity-associated transcriptional programs and the expression of chromatin regulators, consistent with a dominant role for the Nanog protein in transcriptional and epigenetic control. These domain specific effects are not redundant but instead reflect separable regulatory activities encoded within a single transcript. Together, these findings demonstrate that distinct regions of a single mRNA can encode separable and asymmetric biological functions, revealing mRNA domain usage as a distinct regulatory layer through which genes can encode multiple biological outputs beyond protein coding capacity.

developmental biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Transgenic Mice and Pluripotent Stem Cells Express EGFP under the Control of miR-302 Promoter

MicroRNAs are a group of short non-coding RNAs that undertake various roles in different cell signaling pathways and developmental stages. They regulate gene expression levels at the post-transcriptional stage, which results in cleavage of mRNAs or repression of their translation. Some miRNAs, including the miR-302 cluster, are critical regulators for the stemness state of embryonic stem cells and cell fate patterning. The miR-302 cluster is located in the intron of a non-coding gene that has no other reported function, other than hosting miR-302, and grant a complex expression regulation through upstream its regulatory sequences. To date, analysis of the miR-302 expression pattern in a transgenic mouse model has not been reported. In this study, we generated transgenic mice that expressed EGFP driven by miR-302 upstream regulatory sequences that harbored the core promoter of its host gene. We examined the activity of the miR-302 promotor in somatic tissues of transgenic mice, transgenic blastocysts, and embryonic stem cells derived from transgenic blastocysts. Our results showed that miR-302 highly expressed in both blastocysts and the first passages of transgenic embryonic stem cells, and has low expression in the somatic tissues of transgenic mice. It could be concluded that different temporal and spatial gene expression patterns occur during the embryonic and adult stages in mice.

developmental biology↗