Well known truncation of INI-1

Abstract

Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (ATRT) is a rare type of pediatric brain tumor that most commonly affects children under the age of 3. Being that the people who are primarily affected by this disease are so young, current treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation are not very effective at treating this cancer giving a bleak survival rate of less than 10%. More than 95% of patients with ATRT are missing or severely lacking a protein from the SWI/SNF complex, INI-1, although the function of this protein is still unknown. There are several common truncations of INI-1 that are associated with ATRT. Among the common truncations is the C-terminal fraction, INI-1 (186-385). The goal of this project is to successfully clone this 200 amino acid truncation into a vector so that the causation of ATRT may be better understood. In order to clone, I first had to amplify the DNA using PCR, purify the product, perform restriction digests on both my gene of interest and the cloning vector, and successfully complete ligation and transformation.