h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there!

Woudn't it be nice to add something on the catalytical abilities of RNA, hammerhead ribozyme etc, and tell about autocatalytical (particularily self-replicating) RNA? The RNA world wold be an interesting subject, IMHO, as well as a little about SELEX or some other in vitro evolution technique.. At least, that strikes me as one of the major RNA features.

Oh, the tail/stability issue as well targeting signals are fun as well, don't you think!? As well as the ribosome and other RNA-protein machines..

Hmm, well, there is such a wealth of scientific knowledge.
How much should be put into the guide, and to what extent should it just be a fun, collection-of-resources site, do you think?

We could even go through self-splicing introns and the like. There are also numerous viruses that still have an RNA genome. And then there is the wierd stuff like Trapanosomes (sp?). But covering those would be some serious work, there has to be a line drawn somewhere.

Ofcourse, ofcourse! I'm just blurting out what comes to my mind when I read..

Oh, and since you bring it up, I definately think there should be something about Trypanosomes! (Im currently working in a group sequencing of one of them.. )

Cool, where abouts?

I only covered them briefly in a course about parasites, but their gene structure is so arse about face. Something about no T bases in coding strands and having to have them all spliced into the mRNA after transcription. Thats about all I can remember.

The Uppsala Genome Sequencing Laboratory; we're working on T. cruzi, more precisely.

Well, I'm not exactly the geneticist of the group, but I certainly agree that their genetics are way beyond what one would call normal. From what I gather from the other parasite projects, like the P. falciparum, thats really not that uncommon for a parastite, though..

You're correct in that there is extensive mRNA editing going on. A lot of the genetic information (at least in one organelle..) is encoded as gRNAs (guide) that govern the substitutions. It's not like it skews up the base distributions in coding sequence all *that* much, though. That would have made finding their genes pretty easy, and my current projects a lot less interesting.. Oh, and the editing seems not to be extensive in the "main", nuclear genome.

Expression is mainly polycistronic, but there are (few, recent) examples of exon-intron structure as well. There seem to be little promoters, and regulation might occur mostly on the RNA - or at least translation - level.

The genome is *way* repetitive. If you think telomeric regions are repeated, you should have a look at this.. The Trypanosomes also pull some pretty fancy stunts to fool the immune system, like continously mutating their poly-sacch coating to avoid recognition.

Hmm, I could talk at some length, I guess. Its an interesting field to be in, simply put!

I do remember something about telomeric reciprocal translocations between chromosomes. Thats where most of the coat-protein genes are, I think.

Anyway, a little about me. I'm working on the Cancer Genome Project, but I'm a computer techy type really.

Thats fun! What are you working on, more precisely?

I'm part of the bioinfo team here. We aren't that many, though, so I get to do quite a lot of sysadmin and sequencing infrastructure stuff. My main research focus should really be on machine learning and pattern analysis. I've only just started my graduate ed, so I hope to have some time for that later this winter.

Technically, I'm the oligo designer. But I spend most of my time curating the database and writing scripts to process the raw data from the lab.