Dr Cyril Dominguez
Associate Professor in Structural Biology
School/Department: Molecular Cell Biology, Department of
Telephone: +44 (0)116 229 7073
Email: cd180@leicester.ac.uk
Profile
Research
Alternative splicing of pre-mRNA is a centrally important and extraordinary cellular process that allows the generation of proteomic diversity from only 20000 human genes.The process of alternative splicing is very complex and still poorly understood. It is regulated by many proteins called splicing factors that may either enhance or prevent the recognition of a particular splice site in a time cell-type and cell-cycle dependent manner. Cell signalling also plays a major role in the regulation of alternative splicing through post-translational modifications of splicing factors demonstrating a tight link between cell signalling and alternative splicing regulation.
Our research interest is to understand at the molecular level the role of splicing factors on alternative splicing. Additionally we are interested in the role of pre-mRNA secondary and tertiary structures on alternative splicing regulation.
To this aim we are studying RNA protein-protein and protein-RNA complexes using structural biology techniques (NMR and X-ray) biophysical methods (ITC Fluorescence polarization) and biochemical methods (RNA footprinting EMSA).
Publications
(0) Weldon C,. Dacanay J.G., Gokhale V., Boddupally P.V.L., Behm-Ansmant I., Burley G.A., Branlant C., Hurley L.H., Dominguez C., Eperon I.C. (2018). Specific G-quadruplex ligands modulate the alternative splicing of Bcl-x. Nucleic Acids Res., 46, 886-96
Weldon C., Behn-Ansmant I., Burley G.A., Hurley L.H., Branlant C., Eperon I.C., and Dominguez C. (2016). Identification of G-quadruplexes using 7-deaza-guanine substituted RNA. Nat. Chem. Biol., 13, 18-20
Feracci M., Foot J.N., Grellscheid S.N., Danilenko M., Stehle R., Gonchar O., Kang H.S., Meyer N.H., Liu Y., Lahat A., Sattler M., Eperon I.C., Elliott D.J., and Dominguez C. (2016). Structural basis of RNA recognition and dimerization by the STAR proteins T-STAR and Sam68. Nat. Comms, 7, 10355.
Supervision
Teaching
BS3070: Structural Biology. Co-convenor and Lecturer onNMR
BS3010: Gene expression. Lecturer on protein-RNA interactions
MB2050: Medical Biochemistry.
Lecturer on drug screening and design
MSc Bioinformatics: Lecturer on Protein structure and NMR
Media coverage
https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2016/november/new-advance-in-rna-studies- holds-out-hope-for-cancer-drug-development
https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2016/january/new-study-creates-first-3d- vision-of-cancer-target