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SUMMARY:Comparative genomics of RNA viruses - Dr Andrew Firth\, Department
  of Pathology\, University of Cambridge.
DTSTART:20160210T140000Z
DTEND:20160210T150000Z
UID:TALK61880@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:38916
DESCRIPTION:Many of the most medically and economically important viruses 
 have genomes composed of RNA instead of DNA. Such viruses include influenz
 a\, hepatitis C\, yellow fever\, dengue\, SARS\, MERS\, mumps\, measles\, 
 ebola and rabies viruses. RNA virus genomes are extremely small (ranging f
 rom 2 to 32 kb) and evolve under selection pressures very different from t
 hose that bear on\nthe genomes of cellular organisms. Virus replicative cy
 cles and gene expression mechanisms also differ significantly from those o
 f cellular organisms. Genomes commonly contain overlapping genes (where th
 e same nucleotide sequence codes for different proteins in different readi
 ng frames) and functional RNA elements (e.g. RNA structures involved in\nr
 eplication\, translational control or genome packaging) embedded within pr
 otein-coding sequences. Thus\, techniques developed for cellular genome\na
 nalysis are not always applicable to RNA virus sequences. On the other han
 d\, RNA viruses evolve very rapidly and\, for many species\, there are man
 y\nsequenced isolates with high intraspecies divergences so that comparati
 ve genomic analyses can be used at the single-species level. The seminar w
 ill cover an introduction to RNA viruses\, non-canonical gene expression m
 echanisms\, and some comparative genomic methods for investigating 'hidden
 ' genes and non-coding functional elements in virus genomes.
LOCATION:MR4\, Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Cambr
 idge
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