Workshop: Community Building for Long Non-Coding RNA; Fall/Summer; Morgantown, WVA; Houston, TX

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The recent discovery that the human genome is extensively transcribed is changing our traditional view of gene regulation, and gene function. A significant part of this transcription involves long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs). LncRNAs are known to function as RNA genes and are involved in various biological and cellular processes, such as genetic imprinting, chromatin remodeling, gene regulation in both plants and animals, and embryonic development in vertebrates. Not surprisingly, LncRNAs have been implicated in several difficult diseases, such as cancer, and diabetes. Although some individual LncRNAs have been well studied, their nature and functions are still not completely understood. Over 30,000 have been identified, with this number increasing daily. Thus, our ability to experimentally study individual LncRNAs and their functions in the wet-lab is far outpaced by the sheer volume and diversity of available data, and the increasing rate at which the data is being generated. There is an acute need for computational tools to simplify the process of characterizing the known LncRNAs to determine their functional associations. Yet, automated methods will undoubtedly generate an enormous number of hypotheses on the potential functions of a given lncRNA, far beyond the capacity of any individual wet laboratory to verify. This calls for a collaborative community-driven approach, where researchers from various fields will come together to address a critical problem. Several workshops will be organized, bringing together researchers interested in prioritizing issues of importance to furthering research in this area.The aim of these workshop activities is to build a diverse community of scholars centered on the problem of functional annotation of LncRNAs, including LncRNA detection and data generation, and standardization of lncRNA nomenclature. Such a community will bring together computational scientists, molecular and structural biologists, medical scientists, and others, from academia,government, industry (especially healthcare and pharmaceutical industry), to focus on key issues in our improved understanding of LncRNAs and their functions. By creating public forums of the outcomes of discussions and activities, these workshops will raise awareness on key problems and challenges in studying the biology of in LncRNAs, their functions, and information sharing challenges such as annotation, and nomenclature standardization. A highly diverse community of researchers will be encouraged to participate, who could provide a novel perspective to these problems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.