Abstract

In biology astronomical amounts of genomic information has been and continues to be generated due to the rapid development of novel, faster, and cheaper DNA sequencing technologies. The leading challenges of 21st century biology lie in the interpretation and integration of these data using computational genomics approaches. Especially the sequencing of individual human genomes aims to gain a deeper understanding of the personal biology of our genomes in health and disease. Beyond the information encoded by the raw DNA sequence there are additional layers of epigenetic codes that play important roles. In this Darwin College Science Group Seminar I will give a brief overview on the organisation of the genome and how information is epigenetically encoded with respect to it’s biology. Then I will describe how this information can be obtained using the current high-throughput next-generation sequencing technology. I will close with an example of a project that investigates the association of non-protein-coding RNAs with chromatin in relation to the initiation of DNA replication.