Belmont SURFS

Uncovering the Function of the Bop3 Gene in mRNA Export Using Yeast Genetic Analysis

Export of mRNA out of the nucleus is essential for the generation of proteins in eukaryotic life, such as the budding yeast S. Cerevisiae. Various proteins work together to export mRNA, and the deletion of genes which create these proteins causes cells to have mRNA export defects. Overexpression of a gene called Bop3 was found to rescue one of these defects, but little is known about Bop3’s function, particularly in regard to mRNA export. I sought to uncover Bop3’s specific function and hypothesized that this can be discovered by investigating Bop3’s synthetic lethality with other genes of known functions. Synthetic lethality takes advantage of the concept that one gene can compensate for the loss of another, which allows the conclusion that the genes have similar functions. One plasmid was found to rescue a Bop3 synthetic lethal strain, indicating that it contained Bsl1 (Rockouski, 2021, Wagner, 2022). I used restriction enzymes to cut and narrow down the genes on the plasmid to find which specific gene on the plasmid rescued Bop3. In parallel, another part of my project  was investigating whether Bop3 and Bsl1 could also rescue other mRNA export mutants. Future work in this project could be done in further characterizing the yBA 35 Bop3 and Bsl1 mutant strain to give more insight into the confounding results.