Robert Piskol

From EESwiki

Dipl. Bioinf. Robert Piskol

Section of Evolutionary Biology
LMU BioCenter
Grosshaderner Str. 2
82152 Planegg-Martinsried
Germany

My PhD thesis

Evolutionary Analysis of RNA Secondary Structures

What are the factors that govern the evolution of RNA secondary structures? Under the influence of evolutionary forces such as mutation and selection, a helix will accumulate nucleotide substitutions (covariations, wobbles, mismatches). The chance of a substitution and thus the rate of evolution depends on different attributes of the helix. We developed a logistic regression approach to analyze the evolutionary dynamics of RNA secondary structures. This approach was applied to a set of computationally predicted RNA secondary structures in vertebrate introns to test for the simultaneous impact of different attributes of the helix. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis of a negative influence of the physical distance between pairing nucleotides on the occurrence of covariations, as predicted by Kimura's model of compensatory evolution. Further work will focus on small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs). By applying the previously established methodology we will be able to test for similarities and differences in the evolution of this certain class of RNAs compared to non-coding RNAs in general.