Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics
in the
School of Biological Sciences
Mengnan Zhang
will defend her thesis:
Analysis of the role of miRNAs in ovarian cancer metastasis
Tuesday, March 26th, 2019
1:00 PM Eastern Time
Engineered Biosystems Building, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Seminar Room (EBB 1005)
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. John F. McDonald
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Committee Members:
Dr. Jung H. Choi
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. I. King Jordan
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Fredrik O. Vannberg
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Ronghu Wu
School of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract
Cancer mortality is primarily due to metastasis. Metastasis is a complex multi-step process involving, on the molecular level, regulatory control of two key development pathways: epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and it reciprocal, mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET). MiRNAs are small regulatory RNA molecules that play key roles in the regulation of EMT/MET. In this thesis, I examine the role of miRNAs in regulating EMT/MET in ovarian cancer. In the first study, I show that sequentially divergent miRNAs converge to regulate the EMT/MET process through both direct and indirect regulatory changes. In the second study, I explore the impact of genetic difference between different cancer cell lines on the function of miRNAs to regulate the EMT/MET process. In the third study, I evaluate the importance of post-transcriptional/translational changes in the metastasis of a stage III ovarian cancer patient and the role played by miRNAs in regulating the process.
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