The early days of RNomics
- Division of Genomics and RNomics, Core Facility Deep-Sequencing, Innsbruck Medical University - Biocenter, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
- Corresponding author: alexander.huettenhofer{at}i-med.ac.at
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
In the late eighties, I became interested in non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) during the completion of my PhD in Munich (Germany) and continued my interest, as a postdoc, in one of the main centers for ribosomal RNA and protein synthesis research, the lab of Harry Noller at UCSC in California (USA). Shortly after I arrived at Harry's lab, he published one of his hallmark papers in Science, demonstrating that ribosomal RNA, mainly devoid of ribosomal proteins, was able to catalyze protein synthesis. This finding implied a catalytic function for ribosomal RNA rather than a scaffolding function. Many of his former students and postdocs, me included, still regret that Harry didn't receive the Nobel prize for his pioneering work on ribosomes. After all, his lab was the first to sequence the 16S and 23S RNAs (rRNAs) from E. coli, proposed the first 2D and 3D structure models of rRNAs and …
