Wednesday, 10th January, 2018, 12:00 - 13:00

The impact of ribosome profiling in the observed conservation patterns of lncRNAs

Several recent studies have noted that a large fraction of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) associate with ribosomes. Deep sequencing of ribosome-protected fragments, or ribosome profiling, provides detailed information on the regions that are translated in a transcript and revealed that many lncRNAs contain translated open reading frames with 3-nucleotide periodicity. However, ribosomes are not specifically selected during the biochemical isolation procedure, and non-ribosomal ribonucleoprotein complexes are also present in these samples. These regions show no periodicity and are highly localized, so ribosome profiling can also identify different RNA-protein complexes with high resolution.

In our study we examine the patterns of ribosome profiling in mouse hippocampus to find enrichment of translated open reading frames and ribonucleoprotein complexes in different categories of lncRNAs. We identify conserved regions at sequence level between mouse and human to find putative functional regions in lncRNAs. We examine how the overlap with protein-coding transcripts and promoter signals also affects the conservation of lncRNA sequences.

Speaker: Jorge Ruiz, Evolutionary Genomics, GRIB (IMIM)

Room Aula 473.10 (4th floor)