Events
[Jan. 18] 89th IRCMS Seminar
January 12 2023
We would like to inform you that the 88th IRCMS seminar has been scheduled as below.
* This IRCMS seminar is open to everyone.
Date : January 18, 2023 (Wednesday)
Venue: Onsite & Online
IRCMS Lounge, IRCMS Building & Zoom
Time : 16:00-17:00
Speaker : Dr. Roland G. Huber
Bioinformatics Institute (BII), Agency for Science, Technology and Research
Title : Identifying functional RNA elements in viral genomes
Abstract :
Recently, significant advances have been made in the elucidation of RNA structures. It has been understood for some time that the RNA structure can play a critical role in gene regulation. Structural motifs in RNA can influence various biological processes, ranging from translation initiation and termination, resistance to degradation, splicing, or ligand-dependent conformational switching. The advent of high-throughput sequencing has enabled the application of the previously developed chemical structure probing techniques on a larger scale.
While significant progress has been made in RNA structure determination, the challenge of interpreting these structures and identifying functional elements remain. Generally, structural surveys readily produce a plethora of structural elements, but a significant proportion of these elements are likely opportunistic folds without much functional relevance. Other structural elements play a key role in the biological processing of these RNAs, and a number of examples are well described. In particular, elements in the 5'- and 3'-untranslated regions (UTRs) of coding RNA segments, as well as lncRNAs, contain structural elements crucial for their function.
This talk will showcase some success stories of how we were able to identify novel functional elements in viral genomic RNAs and demonstrate that their disruption leads to considerable attenuation of viral fitness. Hence, such elements could prove a useful new class of drug targets.
Flyer: (Click to enlarge)
