Internship description
Small RNAs (e.g. small interfering RNA, microRNA, Piwi-interacting RNA) are essential in the correct functioning of many biological processes of metazoans. To investigate the effect of ocean acidification on the small RNA profile of corals, we extracted and sequenced the small RNA fraction of a coral that was subjected to four different pCO2 levels under controlled conditions.
This project will involve the use of bioinformatics tools (and possibly even self-written ones!) to analyse the changes in expression of small RNAs, and identify biologically interesting small RNAs for further downstream verification.
Deliverables/Expectations
- Trimming and removing low quality reads in the dataset
- Using a differential expression pipeline to identify small RNA with biologically interesting expression profiles
- Correlate small RNAs of interest to known siRNAs / miRNAs / piRNAs
- Perform further analysis on the data pending earlier results
- Write a (short) manuscript on these analyses
Faculty Name: Manuel Aranda
Field of Study: Biological Sciences, Computational Biology or Environmental Engineering
