Micro Exons
Understanding the impact of early microexon misregulation on zebrafish sleep/wake behaviour
Microexons are extremely short (3-27 nt) conserved exons found in the transcripts of specific genes involved in synaptogenesis and axon guidance. Deregulation of microexons is found in patients with autism, suggesting that their misregulation during brain development could result in neuronal wiring defects that lead to impairments in behaviour. The goal of this project is to test the sleep/wake behaviour of zebrafish larvae with microexon misregulation and to obtain a better understanding of the phenotypes observed. In order to do so we use a variety of techniques such as behavioural assays, bulk-and single-cell neuronal RNA-sequencing as well as drug screens and measures of brain activity levels.
Publications
- Torres-Méndez, A., Bonnal, S., Marquez, Y., Roth, J., Iglesias, M., Permanyer, J., Almudí, I., O’Hanlon, D., Guitart, T., Soller, M., Gingras, A.-C., Gebauer, F., Rentzsch, F., Blencowe, B.J.B., Valcárcel, J., Irimia, M. [2019]. A novel protein domain in an ancestral splicing factor drove the evolution of neural microexons. Nature Ecol Evol, 3:691-701.
- Fernandez, J.P., Moreno-Mateos, M.A., Gohr, A., Miao, L., Chan, S.H., Irimia, M., Giraldez, A.J. [2018]. RES complex is associated with intron definition and required for zebrafish early embryogenesis. PLoS Genet, 14:e1007473.
- Burguera, D., Marquez, Y., Racioppi, C., Permanyer, J., Torres-Mendez, T., Esposito, R., Albuixech, B., Fanlo, L., D'Agostino, Y., Gohr, A., Navas-Perez, E., Riesgo, A., Cuomo, C., Benvenuto, G., Christiaen, L.A., Martí, E., D'Aniello, S., Spagnuolo, A., Ristoratore, F., Arnone, M.I., Garcia-Fernàndez, J., Irimia, M. [2017]. Evolutionary recruitment of flexible Esrp-dependent splicing programs into diverse embryonic morphogenetic processes. Nat Commun, 8:1799.
