One of the larger assignments I completed for this course was a mini-research proposal for my final project. I chose to do my Final Project on the imprinted lncRNA: Airn and its role in newborn mice.
In this section of my blog, I’m going to go through my process of coming up with a question question, making an outline and then finally, writing my proposal.
1. I changed my research question once so I have included below my initial question as well as the updated version.
1) The draft of my project question #1
The Airn gene encodes a unique long non-coding RNA (lncRNA). Airn lncRNA represses gene expression of the Ifg2r gene simply by being constantly expressed. The Airn and Ifg2r genes are located at the same locus and Airn is on Ifg2r’s antisense strand therefore constant expression of the Airn gene represses expression of Ifg2r. Interestingly, in the embryo Airn transcription regulates Ifg2r and the Airn transcript has no known molecular role however, in the placenta mature Airn transcript plays a role in recruiting methyltransferase machinery to genes. The question I’d like to answer for my final project is: does the Airn transcript play a developmental role in the embryo?
2) The draft of my project question #2
Airn RNA is necessary and sufficient to repress Igf2r expression in the cell until Igf2r acquires a DNA methylation mark. Interestingly, when Igf2r becomes methylated and is stably repressed and we would expect that Airn expression would halt but what we see instead is that Airn is continuously expressed. I am interested in studying the functional role of Airn in the cell once Igf2r is methylated. Does Airn have a functional role in the cell in newborn mice?
2. A copy of the filled out outline of my project
Because I changed topics, I have two final project outlines. Final Project Outline 1 is for my first research topic idea and is not fully filled out. Final project outline 2 is the outline that I used to write my final project paper and is filled out.
3. The draft of my project that I handed in for peer-review
So… I mentioned above that I changed my research question once… I actually changed it twice. Before finally settling on the research question that I used to write my mini-research proposal, I was planning on writing my project on the Igf2r methylation and the mechanism by which methyltransferase machinery is recruited. I was interested in looking at the Igf2r promoter to identify a sequence that facilitates the recruitment of methyltransferase enzymes. I wrote up a draft using this topic idea and submitted the draft to ComPAIR to receive feedback from my classmates. Below is the link to the draft that I submitted.
4. The peer-review feedback that I received on my draft
5. My final project
6. My annotated bibliography