I wanted to become involved in the cutting edge of science.

We have preliminary data suggesting that TFII-I is involved in regulating chromatin structure and transcription elongation during the differentiation of red blood cells. We will use recombination technology to introduce a biotinylatable tag into the endogenous TFII-I gene in human HUDEP-2 cells, which can be induced to differentiate along the red blood cell lineage. Biotin engages in strong interactions with streptavidin. We will subject the modified cells to streptavidin mediated pull-down to purify and identify proteins that TFII-I interacts with during red blood cell differentiation. Using streptavidin pull-down we will also map the chromatin sites TFII-I interacts with. Finally, we will generate TFII-I deficient cells to examine changes in gene expression levels using RNA-sequencing. We anticipate that the data will provide us with important information regarding TFII-I’s role in red blood cell differentiation.