University of Hyderabad's researchers aim to understand role of lymphocytes

The Department of Animal Biology, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH), conducted a study to understand the role in developing lymphocytes, which is a type of immune cell. The researchers probed the genome-wide expression accompanied by functional analysis of miRNAs (microRNAs) during lymphoid (B and T) lineage commitment. This is the first study of this scale.

This study demonstrates that miRNAs act in a combinatorial and cell type-specific manner to reinforce B and T lineage-specific gene expression programmes by repressing inappropriate genes. The absence of these miRNAs in developing lymphocytes results in a mixed lineage gene expression pattern. Most of these miRNAs turned out to be regulated by primary lineage-specific transcription factors, highlighting the complexity of regulatory mechanisms orchestrating B and T lymphocyte differentiation.

Such context-dependent, genome-wide analyses of miRNAs combined with functional studies represent one of the first comprehensive investigations to understand the role of miRNAs in developing lymphocytes. Collectively, these studies present a general paradigm for the role of miRNAs in regulating cell-fate decisions in other hematopoietic lineages and for understanding the molecular basis of diseases caused by dysregulation of miRNAs during lymphoid malignancies.

UoH Vice-Chancellor Prof BJ Rao congratulated Prof Jagan Pongubala, responsible for leading the research team, and his team for their excellent work and anticipated more of such high-impact publications from the university, fostering an environment that sustains the highest standards of scholarship and learning.