FK-KMK UGM. Biomedical Informatics Research Group (BiRU) Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing (FK-KMK) UGM held a Guest Lecture with the topic “Role of Non-Coding Variants in Cancer” on Thursday (20/7). PD. Dr. Obul Reddy Bandapalli (Head of Genomic & Translational Science, Syngene International) was present as a guest speaker.

Genomic changes are categorized based on their effects on different functional non-coding elements. The main functional non-coding elements include promoters, enhancers, isolators, non-coding RNAs, and UTRs.

“Mutations in promoters and distal enhancer elements can result in dysregulation of target genes, for example by activating oncogenes or reducing expression of tumor suppressors,” PD. Obul explained. Oncogene copy number amplification is one of the most common genomic activating mechanisms in cancer.

Profiling of SNP array copy number and WGS data has documented tandem duplication of non-coding regions harboring super enhancers that serve as alternative mechanisms to achieve increased expression of target oncogenes. The technology and methods that can be used to detect and study changes in cancer cells are CRISPR. (Reporter: Nirwana)