Neha Agarwal wins Best Poster Award

Neha Agarwal is the recent recipient of the Best Poster Award at the MSU Summer Symposium on Transcriptional Dynamics, Evolution and Systems Biology that was held July 22-24, 2011 in East Lansing, MI. This was an international conference with participants from all across USA, Canada, UK and Israel.

The title of Neha's poster is "Intron-mediated transcriptional regulation is dependent on gene looping." Neha is a PhD student in Dr. Athar Ansari's lab and his research is focused on regulation of transcription through gene looping. This work was initiated by the former graduate student Aboudi and is now being extended by Neha. The role of intron in enhancing the transcription of eukaryotic genes is a universal feature of RNA polymerase II- transcribed genes. Although, it is an evolutionarily conserved feature of eukaryotic transcription apparatus, the molecular mechanism underlying the phenomenon was not clear. The results presented in the poster suggest that intron-mediated enhancement of transcription is through gene looping in budding yeast. This serves as a paradigm in understanding the similar phenomenon in higher eukaryotes.