Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Complex Systems June 1999-Dec 2006, Member of the
Editorial Board since 2007
Member of the Board of the Biotechnologisch-Biomedizinisches Zentrum (BBZ) of the
Univ. of Leipzig, since 2003.
Member of the Board of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics, Leipzig, since
2002.
Member of the Board of the Chemisch Physikalische Gesellschaft in Wien, elected for the
periods 2000/2001 and 2001/2002.
Member of the HGNC International Advisory Committee (2000)
Corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2010
2013-02-05

Title of the presentation: New Arrivals in the RNA Zoo:
Abundant Circularized and Trans-Spliced Transcripts

Abstract:

Following the completion of the human genome project at the turn of the millenium, major technical advances in sequencing technologies have fundamentally changed much of the the life sciences. Suddenly data are not scarce and expensive any more. Instead, data analysis has become the dominating and limiting component of research. At the same time, our picture of the human genome has changed profoundly. Instead of simple 'beads on string model' of well-separated individualized genes, several large-scale international survey efforts such as the ENCODE project have drawn a much more complex picture of an intricate network of intertwined transcripts.

A plethora of unexpected types of transcripts have been discovered in recent years, starting with a surprising diversity of small RNA much beyond microRNAs. A wide variety of usually unspliced intronic RNAs have been described. Most recently, improved methods for mapping transcriptomics data have revealed that circularized and trans-spliced RNAs are abundant in vertebrate genomes. These add an extra layer of complexity in the network of RNA processing.