How Are Different Transcripts in Our Genome Translated Into Proteins?

Uwe Ohler

Our genes only make up about one or two percent of the human genome; the rest of the genome contains other functions including how the genes get activated. In current understanding, this regulation of the genes contains the key to the complexity of human development. Many parts of the human genome, not only the genes, get transcribed and the function of these thousands of transcripts is not yet understood. This is a question UWE OHLER is interested in. In this video, he specifically addresses the question of how many of these different transcripts actually get translated into proteins. Using new sequencing technologies the researchers around Ohler have obtained large genomics data sets with lots of noisy data. Responding to this challenge they successfully developed computational approaches to make sense of them. They thus found new insights into the gene regulation process and answers to the puzzle of non-coding transcripts.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10588

Researcher

Uwe Ohler is Professor of Biology at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and Professor of Computer Science at Humboldt University Berlin. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Duke University Medical School. Some of his previous affiliations include the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include computational biology, machine learning for modeling and classification of genomic data, and the identification of non-coding RNAs and their targets. Since 2011, he has been Deputy and Senior Editor of PLoS Computational Biology. He has received several fellowships and awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the NSF Career Award.

Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine

'The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association was founded in January 1992 on the recommendation of the German Council of Science and Humanities (“Wissenschaftsrat”) with the goal of linking basic science to clinical research. The Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) is an expansion of the MDC into Medical Systems Biology. The MDC integrated parts of three former Central Institutes of the GDR Academy of Sciences and was named for Max Delbrück, a physicist, biologist, and Nobel Prize winner. Currently the institute employs more than 1600 people from nearly 60 countries; over 1300 of those are directly involved in research. The MDC’s annual budget is over 80 million Euros, along with substantial third-party funding obtained by individual scientific groups. As is the case with all Helmholtz institutes, the MDC receives 90 percent of its funding from the federal government and 10 percent from Berlin, the state where it resides.' ( source )

How Are Different Transcripts in Our Genome Translated Into Proteins?

Researcher

Original Publication

Integrative Classification of Human Coding and Noncoding Genes through RNA Metabolism Profiles

Neelanjan Mukherjee

Lorenzo Calviello

Antje Hirsekorn

Stefano de Pretis

Mattia Pelizzola

Detecting Actively Translated Open Reading Frames in Ribosome Profiling Data

Lorenzo Calviello

Neelanjan Mukherjee

Emanuel Wyler

Henrik Zauber

Antje Hirsekorn