RNA: Algorithms for secondary structure and gene detection, summer semester 2007

RNA: Algorithms for secondary structure and gene detection, summer semester 2007 (Schwerpunkte B,C) im Masterstudiengang Bioinformatik der FU

• Next lecture: Wednesday, June 6
• Peter Clote's webpage for this course
• Prof. Clote from Boston College is visiting Berlin in May and June during his sabbatical.
• Prof. Clote will give two 90 minutes lectures per week.
  The course will last for 6 weeks from Tuesday, May 8 to Wednesday, June 20.
• Slides and course material will be distributed.
• Peter Clote's travel dates: May 23, May 24, May 30, May 31, June 19

RNA is a current focus of interest in molecular biology, due to post-transcriptional regulatory action of micro-RNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNA (siRNA), which allow geneticists to knock down protein translational products and better understand gene interactions. RNA seconday structure plays important roles in retranslation events such as incorporating selenocysteine using the UGA stop codon and in ribosomal frameshift slippage events. Due to the multifarious information-carrying, catalytic and regulatory roles played by RNA, it is commonly believed that a primordial "RNA world" existed prior to the world of protein and DNA that we know.

This course surveys some of the recent biology of RNA, and some important algorithms concerning secondary structure prediction and non-coding gene finders. We additionally discuss recent work of our structural bioinformatics lab.

Grading

Small projects will be assigned to students.

5 credit points are awarded after a 10-15 minutes talk about the project at the end of the course.

Literature

• Peter Clote and Rolf Backofen, Computational Molecular Biology, Wiley & Sons (2000)

• Clote Lab