Godbout Lab

Group Members

Michael Beaulieu

Miranda Brun

Tina Gao

Devon Germain

Darryl Glubrecht

Matthew Hildebrandt

Sachin Katyal

Lei Li

Lucy Li

Rong-Zong Liu

Raja Mita

Elizabeth Monckton

Mary Packer

Devon Germain, B.Sc., PhD Student

	Research Project: DEAD box proteins represent a family of poorly understood RNA binding and unwinding proteins that have been implicated in numerous cellular processes. Our lab has identified a DEAD box protein, called DEAD box 1 or DDX1, that is over-expressed in two childhood tumours, retinoblastoma, a tumour of the eye, and neuroblastoma, a tumour of the nervous system. Our goal is to understand how expression of DDX1 affects the growth and progression of both normal and tumour cells.
I currently have two projects addressing the role of DDX1. The first project involves identifying and characterizing the RNA molecules that naturally bind to DDX1 in the cell. I am using two approaches for this project. (1) RNA-DDX1 co-immunoprecipitations using two cell lines: HeLa and retinoblastoma RB522A. Briefly, RNAs bound to DDX1 are co-immunoprecipitated using an antibody to DDX1. The RNAs are released, cDNA is synthesized and cloned into a vector. The cDNAs are then sequenced and identified using DNA and protein databases. (2) RNA immunoprecipitation – microchip arrays (RIP-CHIP) which makes use of RNA microchip arrays to identify RNAs bound to immunoprecipitated DDX1. The second project involves using Drosophila as a model system for the study of DDX1 function. The advantage of using Drosophila is that many genetic tools are available to modify DDX1 expression including endogenous conditional knock-down of DDX1 using RNA interference, tissue-specific knock-down of DDX1, generation of transgenic flies over-expressing DDX1 is a tissue-specific manner.
Techniques: confocal microscopy, protein-RNA immunoprecipitation, RIP-CHIP, gel shift, yeast-three-hybrid, Drosophila culture and dissection.

Abstracts/poster presentations:
Germain, D., Li, L., Bleoo, S., Katyal, S. and Godbout, R. The function and localization of DEAD box 1 (DDX1) in retinoblastoma cell lines. Alberta Cancer Research Institute Research Meeting, Banff, Alberta (November 6-8, 2007).
Germain, D., Hughes, S., Simmonds, A. and Godbout, R. Effects of Ddx1 on Drosophila melanogaster development. 4th Canadian Developmental Biology Conference, Banff, Alberta (February 28 – March 2, 2008).