Professor Dr Nikolaus Rajewsky, Professor for Systems Biology, and Scientific Head of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology,
Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine and Charite
We and others have recently identified tens of thousands of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in animal cells. Their extraordinary stability and differential expression makes them interesting biomarker candidates. I will update on our efforts to trace circRNA expression across tissues and evolution, and our attempts to understand more about biogenesis and possible function of circRNAs.
I will then discuss our attempts to identify functional “micropeptides”, small ORFs which until very recently have escaped genome annotation efforts. Our data argue that numerous so-called long-noncoding RNAs (“lincRNAs”) in fact encode small, functionally important micropeptides.
Finally I will present a method that allows us to biochemically map tens of thousands of miRNA:target RNA duplexes context-dependent and in vivo. These data enabled us to get new insights into principles of miRNA target recognition.
https://www.mdc-berlin.de/1151037/en/research/research_teams/systems_biology_of_gene_regulatory_elements