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Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Biology

First Advisor

Dr. Angie Hilliker

Abstract

Mtr4 is an essential RNA helicase associated with the nuclear exosome and aids in the processing and degradation of many RNAs. Current questions about Mtr4 surround how Mtr4 performs these two separate functions, as well as what regions of the protein affect said functions. Through the random mutagenesis of the C-terminal region of MTR4, we selected for conditional mutants that are phenotypically defective at high temperature to investigate the function of Mtr4 in vivo. To investigate the ability of the conditional mtr4 mutants in processing various RNAs, we used chemiluminescent northern blotting to demonstrate one conditional mutant’s defects in RNA processing and degradation. In order to probe for additional metabolic pathways affected by these mutants, we have begun a phenotypic microarray testing over 1400 different growth and stress conditions.

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