New roles for the phosphorylation of Serine 2 within the RNA polymerase II CTD

Promoter

Dr. Damien HERMAND, UNamur, Molecular Physiology Research Unit (URPhyM), Molecular Genetics (GeMo)

Jury

Dr. Marielle BOONEN, Département Médecine Unamur ; Dr. Jean-Pierre GILLET, Département Sciences Biomédicales UNamur ; Dr. Dominique HELMLINGER, CNRS Montpellier France ; Dr. Damien HERMAND, (Promoteur), Département Sciences Biomédicales UNamur ; Dr. Michel WERNER, Université Paris Diderot CNRS, France.

Summary

This work is divided in two main parts that present two relatively independent research output produced during my thesis.
In the first part, I explored the causes and consequences of a surprising connection between Pol II phosphorylation and tRNA expression in fission yeast. Related to this part, the Appendix 1 presents a published work assessing the conservation of the functions of the RSC chromatin remodeler (a candidate effector in the Pol II phosphorylation/tRNA expression relationship) in fission yeast and budding yeast (Yague-Sanz et al., 2017).
The second part of the thesis consists in a collaborative project in which we determined the role of the kinase CDK-12 in C. elegans development. With the exception of the first two figures that are required for the general understanding of the study, the presented research represents mostly my contribution to the project, that was limited to the generation and analysis of high throughput sequencing data. Related to this part, the Appendix 2 presents a published bioinformatics pipeline that was specifically developed for the project in order to quantify special mRNA processing events (called spliced leader trans-splicing events) that we found were dependent on the activity of the CDK-12 kinase (Yague-Sanz and Hermand, 2018).
Preceding those two main parts of my thesis, a general introduction summarizes concepts important for the understanding and contextualization of both parts, while smaller introductions within the parts introduce more specific concepts.