Abstract: Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have recently emerged as prominent elements of the regulatory transactions of eukaryotic genomes. Many of the known regulatory functions of lncRNAs in both animals and plants rely on the rearrangement of chromatin through direct interactions or recruitment of chromatin-modifying elements. In this talk, I will discuss the difficulty in identifying evolutionary conservation in lncRNAs, and how we characterise these evolutionarily volatile elements in the context of their role as regulators of the three-dimensional conformation of nuclear chromatin in plants. I will also discuss how such techniques have vast potential to illuminate biologically relevant lncRNAs when analysed from a comparative genomics perspective.

Biography: Dr. Selene Fernandez-Valverde’s laboratory studies the evolution of long non-coding RNAs in various animals and plants to better understand and predict their functions using bioinformatic tools. She holds a BSc in Genomic Sciences from UNAM, Mexico, and a PhD from the University of Queensland, where she also did postdoctoral work. Dr. Fernandez-Valverde started her laboratory in late 2015 in Cinvestav, Mexico and recently moved back to Australia. Her research has been published in international scientific journals such as Nature, PNAS and eLIFE. She received the national scholarship L’Oreal-UNESCO-AMC-CONACYT for Women in Science in 2016, the International Rising Talents Fellowship of L’Oreal-UNESCO and a Newton Advanced Fellowship from The Royal Society, UK, in 2018. She has served as a volunteer mentor at foundations such as Ekpapalek and the “Mujeres en STEM: Futuras Líderes” program of the US-Mexico Foundation and was selected as one of the 100 most powerful women in Mexico by the Forbes Mexico magazine in 2018.