Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 14:30

Speaker: Dr. Eivind Valen, Group Leader at the Computational Biology Unit of the University of Bergen

Title: Searching for function in the dark matter of the genome

If you want to meet Dr. Eivind Valen, please book a time slot at https://doodle.com/poll/xnsb4gpse2kskcbn and send an email toanthony.mathelier@ncmm.uio.no. More information below and at http://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/english/research/networks/clsi/seminars/dr.-eivind-valen-lecture.html

Abstract: While most of the genome is transcribed, only a fraction codes for proteins. The remaining non-coding transcripts are largely uncharacterized and have been poetically referred to as “the dark matter of the genome”. We have found that many of these are highly regulated, but the lack of obvious conservation raises the question whether mere regulation is indeed indicative of function. Probing active translation we discovered that several of these actually harbor short "micropeptides" and that translation is considerably more pervasive than previously thought. Gene annotation has been biased against short peptides and an unbiased view could expand the catalog of genes. However, existence does not equal function and this “dark matter of the proteome” has yet to prove its significance.

Organizer: Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE), Research group in Statistics and Biostatistics, Dept. of Mathematics, UiO, Big Insight and the Sven Furberg Seminars in Bioinformatics and Statistical Genomics

Location: 

Kristen Nygaards hus: Lille auditorium, Oslo