Dr Priyanka Sharma

Dr Priyanka Sharma Dr Priyanka Sharma
Gene Regulation, Stem Cell and Cancer program Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, Spain, Email: priyanka.sharma@crg.eu

Research Interest

I am firmly committed to the translational research and education with strong background the in Cancer biology, Molecular and Cell biology, Epigenetics and transcription field. My scientific expertise mainly within the realms of Epigenetics transcriptional regulations focused on proteins post-translational modifications, DNA methylation and their structure-to-function relationships in cancer biology. Through extensive training in Biomedical Science and numerous collaborations, I had been exposed to the work of multi-disciplinary projects and well trained with advance molecular and cell biology approaches. During my master of science degree, I had been trained to investigate functional significance of single nucleotides polymorphisms (SNPs) and their consequent effect on phenotypes. At the time of Ph.D, along with contributing to genomics studies, I took initiative to set up the global DNA methylation and target specific DNA methylation alternation in coronary artery diseases (CAD) patients as compared to control individuals. Followed by identification of specific DMRs (differentially methylated regions) in CAD patients in comparison to their healthy controls. Also performed in silico analysis focused to Homocysteine levels and its implication in several pathological disease conditions (Sharma et al., 2006, Kumar et al., 2005, Sharma et al., 2008. Halder et al., 2010, Sharma et al., 2014). During, Ph.D, I was awarded with Indo?French Ph.D Fellowship (10 Months) worked at Institute Pasteur, Paris, France with Dr. Christian Muchardt on the project entitles as ?Characterization of double histone post-translational modification (citrullination of histone H3 at position 8 along with trimethylation of lysine 9 or H3cit8K9me3 mark) and its impact on transcriptional regulation¨. I got intense training in chromatin biology and hence demonstrated the the presence of H3cit8K9me3 in vitro and also in human cells. To investigate functional implication of this newly characterized histone mark, I worked as INSERM postdoctoral fellow and showed the significance of H3cit8k9me3 in chromatin-mediated repression in case of Multiple Sclerosis (PLoS Genetics 2012). I was awarded with Novartis fellowship and joined Miguel Beato group at Center for Genomic regulation (CRG) on 1st May 2013. During Postdoc at CRG, I worked with in silico analysis of long non-coding RNAs in breast cancer cells under control of steroid hormone regulation. Given the fact in recent years, arginine citrullination found to be associated with number of pathological condition including breast cancer. I used molecular and cell biology approaches to study fundamental mechanism of transcription regulation in breast cancer cells. We discovered that a new modification at the CTD, the deimination of arginine and its conversion to citrulline by peptidyl arginine deiminase 2 (PADI2), an enzyme that has been associated with several diseases including breast cancer. We show that among PADI family members, only PADI2 citrullinates R1810 (Cit1810) at repeat 31 of the CTD, required to maintain the RNAP2 association with the P-TEFb kinase complex. Therefore, cit1810 establishes crucial differences in the nature of paused RNAP2 to overcome pausing and allow the efficient transcription of the actively transcribed genes for cellular proliferation in breast cancer cells (biorvix https://doi.org/10.1101/216143).This work revealed some flaws in the str