Jon Houseley

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Overview

The principle dogma of molecular biology states that DNA is transcribed into RNA that is translated into proteins. This implies that most important tasks in the cell are performed by proteins, and traditionally biologists have concentrated their efforts on understanding the functions of proteins. It may therefore be a little surprising that only a tiny fraction of the human genome encodes proteins, yet in contrast recent studies show that almost the entire genome is transcribed into RNA. This means that many more genes produce RNA than produce proteins, and the key aim of my research is to find functions for these non-protein coding RNAs. I am particularly interested in the ways that non-coding RNAs can control chromatin structure and genome stability. (More...)