Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 11AM
Venue: Davis Auditorium and Online
23 July 2024
Computational adventures in functional transcriptome annotation
Martin SmithThe University of New South Wales
Eukaryotic gene expression is a complex process, where regulation of expression is superimposed with a great diversity of processed RNAs. From basal protists to humans, non-protein coding RNA sequences play an essential and agile role in modulating cellular identity. The lack of protein-coding sequences in ncRNAs complicates the analysis and interpretation of their molecular functions. This presentation will review bioinformatic solutions I have developed and employed to tackle these challenges, in parasitic protists that lack regulation of transcription all the way to genetically modified human cancers. I will present machine learning tools to annotate untranslated regions, comparative genomics pipelines for the identification of putative functional motifs in long non-coding RNAs, and benchmarking strategies to improve the resolution of primary and secondary RNA structures in human transcriptomes (with a sprinkle of RNA modifications).