Betul Bilgin
bilginbe(at)msu.edu
PI:
S. Patrick Walton
Lab:
517-432-1003
Michigan State University
2127 Engineering Building
East Lansing, MI 48824
Hometown:
Usak, Turkey
Undergraduate Institution:
Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey
Undergraduate Institution:
University of Minnesota (M.S)
Project title:
High throughput, quantitative detection of multiple transcription factors in parallel
Project Description:
Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins that play crucial role in cellular processes by activating or repressing target genes. TFs recognize specific nucleic acid sequence of DNA and their binding to DNA with H-bonds and Van de Waals interactions starts protein expression. Activation of TFs is regulated by variety of pathways that can be triggered by extracellular or intracellular stimuli. Inappropriate regulations of TFs cause to improper gene expression and initiates disease pathways like cancer, autoimmune diseases or infections. Quantitative measurements of TF levels are so essential for understanding cellular functions, disease pathways and for designing new drugs. Current TF measurement techniques are based on DNA-TF binding, reporter gene assay or antibody detection. However these techniques can detect only few TFs at a time, can not give quantitative results and not easy to scale up the experiments. These limitations can be solved by using nucleic acid probes that has advantages as selective TF recovery, quantitative detection capacity, and high-throughput screening application. Here we propose a method to quantitatively analyze multiple TFs in parallel. In this technique, TF bound DNA reporters are amplified by PCR and then quantified by microarray technologies. This detection approach grants to analyze up to hundred TFs simultaneously with sensitive quantitative results. Such results can be used to profile cellular development and disease pathways.
Personal Interests:
Water marbling