Zetty Norhana Balia Yusof: Best Poster Award at the 14th International Conference on the Cell and Molecular Biology of Chlamydomonas

Zetty has done it again! She has been awarded The Best Poster Award at the 14th International Conference on the Cell and Molecular Biology of Chlamydomonas held in Wheaton College, Boston, USA. Congratulations dear!!

I guess this has been a very significant award for her. An international award which every young scientist craving to achieve. I remember she told me that her supervisor said to her just to use the old poster or just updated or added a little bit more data using her previous poster template. However, being her (as I know), she was very determined to do a new poster. She knows what she wants and she always do and IT'S WORTH THE EFFORTS! She won $300 sponsored by Genetics Society of America (GSA). Superb!

I think her poster was excellent and all rounded! Lots of of informations but simple and easy to understand with those cartoons. I bet she explained it really well to the judges as well as the visitors. I am very proud of you dear! I think there will be many more achievements to come from her. She always ask me can she be a good scientist errr...YES YOU CAN!!

Attached is her poster's abstract.

The effect of a single base change in THI4 riboswitch on TPP binding in C. reinhardtii

Zetty Norhana Balia Yusof, Michael Moulin, Haruka Tamura and Alison G. Smith

Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, UK

In bacteria, many genes involved in the biosynthesis of cofactors such as TPP are regulated by riboswitches. Riboswitches are genetic control elements located mainly within the 5’ untranslated regions of messenger RNAs. Upon binding of regulatory signals, which include vitamins, amino acids, nucleobases and uncharged tRNA, these RNA elements undergo conformational changes that modulate gene expression. The thiamin pyrophosphate (TPP)-binding riboswitch is found in all three kingdoms of life and can regulate gene expression via premature termination of transcription, initiation of translation and mRNA splicing. In the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, we have found that TPP riboswitches are found in THI4 and THIC, the genes encoding the first enzymes of the thiazole and pyrimidine branches respectively of the thiamine biosynthesis pathway. In this study we report an in vivo expression analysis of the effect of mutations in conserved bases located in P2 and P4 stems of the C. reinhardtii THI4 riboswitch. We performed an analysis of mutants with single base substitutions in the riboswitch linked with a luciferase gene and observed the expression with the absence or presence of thiamin. We observed high expression of luciferase activity without the presence of thiamin and low expression with the presence of thiamin in the non-mutated riboswitch. When a single base located in the P2 stem was changed to mimic the pyr1 mutant (pyrithiamine resistant mutant), the luciferase activity was maintained even in the presence of thiamine. A single base change of one the conserved residues in the P4 stem also resulted in a stable luciferase activity in the presence of thiamine. The results confirm the participation of bases located in P2 and P4 stems in the recognition of TPP as well as the consequence of binding of TPP towards the expression of THI4 gene in C. reinhardtii.