Subject: [BABDG] REMINDER: April 28 Meeting: Gill Bejerano, UCSC

From: "[BABDG]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:00:58 -0500

To the Bay Area Bioinformatics Community,

Bay Area Bioinformatics is an organization open to all members of the San Francisco Bay Area who have an interest in the field of Bioinformatics. The purposes of the organization are to represent the local community of bioinformatics professionals; to provide a monthly forum for the presentation of current developments in bioinformatics and other topics of interest; to promote professional and career development in bioinformatics, by encouraging educational programs and the dissemination of job opportunities; and to foster communication among the diverse community of professionals who work in bioinformatics and related fields. Please visit our web site at http://www.bayareabioinformatics.org.

The Bay Area Bioinformatics Discussion Group is affiliated with the International Society for Computational Biology www.iscb.org.

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Ultraconservation and Function in the Human Genome

Gill Bejerano
Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Engineering
UC Santa Cruz

Thursday, April 28, 2005 
7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Presentation
8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Discussion and Announcements

Munzer Auditorium
Stanford University

(Unless otherwise noted, all BAB events are free of charge and require no RSVP or registration.)

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Abstract:

In a systematic evaluation of the complete human, mouse and rat genomes, we have recently reported hundreds of syntenic regions that are perfectly conserved between all three. These unexpected, so called ultraconserved regions, challenge our current understanding of the human genome. Moreover, the majority of these regions do not overlap protein-coding exons.

Initial analysis has shown these regions to be preferentially located overlapping exons of genes involved in RNA processing, or in introns or nearby genes involved in the regulation of transcription and development. And while nearly all of these regions are found in chicken, and most are also found in frog and jawed fish, virtually none could be traced using sequence similarity beyond the vertebrates.

Deciphering the functions, evolutionary origins and molecular mechanisms that maintain these regions pose exciting computational and experimental challenges. I will present the work which has led to this discovery, and discuss our current computational and experimental efforts to better understand this phenomenon.

See http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~jill/ for additional information. 

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Speaker Background:

Gill Bejerano hold a BSc, summa cum laude, in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science, and a PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jeruslaem, Israel. Twice recipient of the RECOMB best paper by a young scientist award, and a former Eshkol pre-doctoral Scholar and HHMI postdoc. His current research focuses on deciphering the function and evolution of the non-coding regions of the Human Genome. He is a postdoc at David Haussler's Lab at UC Santa Cruz, and intends to go on the job market this coming fall.

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Directions to Munzer Auditorium at Stanford University:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/munzer/location.html

Munzer Auditorium is in the Beckman Center. A map of this area of the Stanford campus is here:

http://www.med.stanford.edu/maps/sumc.html

Parking in the lot near the Beckman Center is unrestricted after 5 p.m. 

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