Investigating the Functional Roles of Delta-Catenin Protein

Delta-catenin is a synaptic protein from the p120ctn family that has been found to play a role in various neurological disorders such as Autism and Alzheimer’s disease. There has been research conducted in knocking down deltacatenin in mouse neurons, but little work has been done with human neurons. In order to investigate the functional roles of delta-catenin, we targeted 3 different sections of the delta-catenin gene and determined the section most effective in repressing the gene’s mRNA in human induced Pluripotent Stem cell-derived neurons. Via CRISPRi repression, delta-catenin was knocked down and through quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction, the relative expression of the mRNA was determined. Results showed one guide RNA to be the most effective a halting the transcription of delta-catenin mRNA. The knockdown of delta-catenin was confirmed, marking the first step in the investigation into the functional role of delta-catenin in human neurons.