Dra. Araxi Urrutia
Department of Biology and Biochemistry,
University of Bath, UK. 

Thursday, December 17, 2009

 

Mexico, D.F. - On Thursday,  December 17 2009, it was conducted in the Aula Magna of National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), the General Session: “Genomic an evolutive perspective” by Dr. Araxi Urrutia,  Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, UK.

 

Dr. Urrutia presented her Scientific work done on the transcription patterns under the assumption that changes in transcription patterns underlie many of the observed differences between species, and so can be extrapolated in the context of human disease, in which the disease mechanisms can be understood as transcriptional changes that cause a change in the homeostasis.

She explained  Alus are mechanisms that determine the evolution of the transcriptome, it is a potential force in the evolutionary story of primates, as well as intragenomic conflicts between families of transposons. On the other hand, she described how the transcription patterns influence the evolution of genomes and how through the use of bioinformatics tools can be understood and interpreted biological processes.

 

In short, Dr. Urrutia noted that Alu sequences are a marker for expression in a large number of genes and not a determinant in the evolution of regulation of activity. Thus, high expression genes have similar characteristics and selective pressures that translate globally. Also, the patterns of gene activity determining the withholding of duplicate genes, and that the order of genes along choromosomes is not random but responds to such patterns. Finally, she noted that the analysis of global activity patterns is a powerful tool to elucidate gene function in both physiological and pathological states.