ERC Starting Grant · 2017
Pervasive Upstream Non-Coding Transcription Underpinning Adaptation
Genomic DNA represents the blueprint of life: it instructs solutions to challenges during life cycles of organisms. Curiously DNA in higher organisms is mostly non-protein coding (e.g. 97% in human). The popular “junk-DNA” hypothesis postulates that this non-coding DNA is non-functional. However, high-throughput transcriptomics indicates that this may be an over-simplification as most non-coding DNA is transcribed. This pervasive transcription yields two molecular events that may be functional: 1.) resulting long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) molecules, and 2.) the act of pervasive transcription itself. Whereas lncRNA sequences and functions differ on a case-by-case basis, RNA polymerase II (Pol…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.