Below are the names of students in this course. I give the email addresses so you can contact one another when you are paired together to present a paper.


joseph.r.francica@vanderbilt.edu
Jason Smith: jason.g.smith@vanderbilt.edu
Thet Tint: thet.h.tint@vanderbilt.edu
Ami Waters: ami.e.waters@vanderbilt.edu
kari.e.yakubisin@vanderbilt.edu




GROUP COMPOSITION: initially, the first two papers will be presented by two large groups of students. Several subsequent papers will be presented by groups of mostly two and some groups of three students. You are responsible for arranging times to meet as a group to organize your discussion and presentation. Each member of each group should participate in some way during the class discussion/presentation of your group's paper. Please note that the composition of the groups changes so that you will be "paired" with different classmates in each group in which you participate.

Finally, everyone will present a paper by themselves.

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SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

For each class meeting, the group or individual that is the presenter is listed along with the paper that the group or individual will be presenting. The presenter (group or individual) will lead the discussion of the indicated paper; however, everyone is expected to have read each paper and to participate in the discussion.

Jan. 18

Overview of class and of siRNAs and miRNAs. Please read, at least to some extent so that you are familiar in a very general way with siRNA and miRNA, the following two reviews prior to class: siRNA (Wang and Carmichael, 2004) and miRNA (Bartel, 2004). The first article also reviews the PKR/interferon response or what they refer to as the long dsRNA responses. You should skim these parts in a coursory manner, just for background and general information. Instead, concentrate on the short dsRNA responses (siRNA and miRNA).

Jan. 25

We will all read and discuss together the following 4 papers:

two papers on RNAi in C. elegans--Fire et al., 1998 and Montgomery et al., 1998.

two papers on RNAi in Neurospora crassa--Cogani and Macino, 1997 and Cogani and Macino, 1999.

Feb. 1

Joe and Jason: RNAi in plants (Waterhouse et al, 1998.

Thet and Ami: RNAi mutants in C. elegans (Tabera et al., 1999.

Feb. 8

Joe and Kari: identifying role of small ds RNAs (Zamore et al., 2000)

Jason and Thet: identifying role of small ds RNAs (Parrish et al., 2000).

Feb. 15

Joe and Ami: two papers on dicer identification (Bernstein et al., 2001 and Knight and Bass, 2001)

Kari and Jason: dicer activity (Nykamen et al., 2001).

Feb. 22

Ami and Kari: Drosophila dicers (Lee et al., 2004)

Joe and Thet: two papers on RISC identification (Hammond et al., 2000 and Hammond et al., 2001).

March 1

Jason and Ami: argonaute 2 and mRNA cleavage (Rand et al., 2004)

Thet and Kari: argonaute 2 and mRNA cleavage (Meister et al., 2004).

March 15

Ami and Kari: RNAi to combat the flu (Go et al., 2004)

Joe, Jason, and Thet: RNAi to combat high cholesterol (Soutschek et al., 2004).

March 22

Guest Presentation: Alex Flint, BSCI graduate student, on his work on microRNAs and their role in regulating embryogenesis in zebrafish.

March 29

Joe: two papers on discovery of let7 as an miRNA (Reinhart et al., 2000 and Pasquinelli et al., 2000).

Jason: transcriptional control of let7 (Johnson et al., 2003).

April 5

Thet: dicer processes let7 (Hutvagner et al., 2001).

Ami: mechanism of miRNA generation (Lee et al., 2002).

April 12

Kari: Drosha processes miRNA's (Lee et al., 2003).

Joe: plant miRNA's (Vaucheret et al., 2004).

April 19

Jason: Two papers on how many miRNA's are there (Lee and Ambrose, 2001 and Grodea et al., 2003).
Thet: role of miRNA in hematopoesis (Chen et al., 2004).

April 26

Ami: miRNA in establishing neuronal asymetry (Johnston and Hobert, 2004).

Kari: dicer null mice ( Kanellopoulou et al., 2005)