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Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Campus Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biological Sciences (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Advisor 1

Guiliang Tang

Committee Member 1

Xiaoqing Tang

Committee Member 2

Tarun Dam

Abstract

Small non-coding RNA includes miRNAs (microRNAs) and siRNAs (interfering RNAs), which act as regulators in genomes and epigenetic. They can play a central and important role in gene regulation in plants and fungus as well as animals. Nowadays, many techniques and approaches have been shown to explore the function of small RNA in eukaryote. However, because miRNAs family are usually consist of multiple members, so the most efficient methods to investigate its function is to block the whole miRNA family effectively and specifically without the overlapped of gene function. In this paper, we will use an artificial transcripts called STTM (short tandem target mimic) to block the function of miRNA-7 in Metarhizium and through its phenotypes or the result of RT-PCR techniques to further detect and reveal its function. Since STTM have already applied in model plants like Arabidopsis, so the main task of this study is to identify the unique functions of miRNA-7 in fungi Metarhizium. The overall objective is to understand the mechanism of miRNA function in fungus through the technology of STTM. In this paper, we will find that STTM can be applied in fungus and the expression level of miRNA -7 will decrease obviously as well as the change of the spore production. In addition, this paper will demonstrated that the SDN enzyme also exist in other fungus which indicate that the STTM can be applied in the research of all fungus.

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