The “RNA world” is not at all hypothetical but rather the biological world we live in (1). For RNA to function within a modern cellular milieu of proteins and DNA, numerous chemical modifications coevolved that help sculpt its interactions (2). ...
Read More »Quantitative analysis of bacterial transcriptomes with RNA-seq
RNA sequencing has emerged as the premier approach to study bacterial transcriptomes. While the earliest published studies analyzed the data qualitatively, the data are readily digitized and lend themselves to quantitative analysis. High-resolution RNA sequence (RNA-seq) data allows transcriptional features ...
Read More »Extensive Error in the Number of Genes Inferred from Draft Genome Assemblies
The initial publication of the genome sequence of many plants, animals, and microbes is often accompanied with great fanfare. However, these genomes are almost always first-drafts, with a lot of missing data, many gaps, and many errors in the published ...
Read More »Strategies for transcriptional splice variant detection
The advent and improvement of high-throughput sequencing over the past decade leveraged the study of whole genomes and transcriptomes of different organisms at lower costs. In transcriptomics, RNA-Seq expands our capacity to understand gene expression in different tissues and pathologies, ...
Read More »Transcriptome-related problems for which novel inference approaches are needed
Since the appearance of the ENCODE project and due to follow-up work, a shift from the pervasive transcription observed from RNA-Seq data to its functional validation is gradually occurring. However, much less attention has been turned to the problem of ...
Read More »Techniques for positional information integration on the transcriptome
The recent explosion of high-throughput sequencing methods applied to RNA molecules is allowing us to go beyond the description of sequence variants and their relative abundances, as measured by RNA-seq. We can now probe for RNA engagement in polysomes, for ...
Read More »Transcriptomics of developing embryos and organs: A raising tool for evo-devo
Comparative transcriptomics has become an important tool for revisiting many evo-devo questions and exploring new ones, and its importance is likely to increase in the near future, partly because RNA-seq data open many new possibilities. The aim of this opinion ...
Read More »Designing Microarray and RNA-seq Experiments for Greater Systems Biology Discovery
Microarray and RNA-seq experiments have become an important part of modern genomics and systems biology. Obtaining meaningful biological data from these experiments is an arduous task that demands close attention to many details. Negligence at any step can lead to ...
Read More »A Review of the Methods for Processing High-Throughput RNA Sequencing Data
High-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods for analyzing RNA populations (RNA-Seq) are gaining rapid application to many experimental situations. The steps in an RNA-Seq experiment require thought and planning, especially because the expense in time and materials is currently higher and the ...
Read More »Analysis of the RNA content of the exosomes derived from blood serum and urine and its potential as biomarkers
Exosomes are tiny vesicles (30-150 nm) constantly secreted by all healthy and abnormal cells, and found in abundance in all body fluids. These vesicles, loaded with unique RNA and protein cargo, have a wide range of biological functions, including cell-to-cell ...
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