Poster abstracts

Poster number 24 submitted by Benjamin Sauerwine

Bioinformatic and Deep Sequencing Study of Small RNAs in Malaria

Ben Sauerwine (Physics, Carnegie Mellon University), Kausik Chakrabarti (Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University), Michael Widom (Physics, Carnegie Mellon University)

Abstract:
We will display recent results of a physically motivated bioinformatic
search for miRNA as well as deep sequencing data corresponding to small
non-coding RNAs from blood-stage Plasmodium falciparum lysate. While no
small RNA gene regulatory pathway is currently known in Malaria, it is
possible that snoRNA or introns could be processed into functional
regulatory elements akin to microRNA called mirtrons. We searched for
possible microRNA using a novel bidirectional target-finding algorithm
and identified several candidates. Experimental evidence from deep
sequencing indicates that snoRNA are indeed processed into small RNA of
length 16-35nt. We attempt to relate this data to putative gene
regulation pathways in Malaria.

Keywords: Malaria, Deep Sequencing, microRNA