Conferences
15–20 March 2015, Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, USA
Long Noncoding RNAs: From Evolution to Function
It has become clear that metazoan genomes are replete with transcription from non-protein-coding regions, generating many long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) transcripts. Recent progress has enabled genome-wide mapping of lncRNAs and has unraveled unifying themes; lncRNAs function as epigenetic regulators, scaffolds, decoys, and enhancers. While these and other themes have been pursued in several meetings, the field has matured in numerous novel directions, and we will leverage these to comprehensively characterize lncRNAs across metazoan genomes. We aim to broaden our horizons with emerging data from humans and model systems, empowered by novel genomic technologies, including RNA-protein interaction mapping (CLIP- and RIP-seq), reverse genetics for lncRNAs not conserved in evolution (RNA sequencing in control and lncRNA-perturbed backgrounds), and proteogenomics to empirically bound the translational output of putative lncRNAomes. These topics have recently amassed diverse insights into RNA biology. The goal of our meeting is to integrate novel findings, enhance previously proposed models of lncRNA function, and generate new testable hypotheses. Our synthesis of RNA structure, function, evolution, and informatics will foster progress in this rapidly growing field.
