The new bioinformatics course (CTS 505, see teaching) serves as an introductory exploration into the fundamental principles, algorithms, and practical application of bioinformatics in hypothesis-driven research spanning basic and translational domains. The curriculum encompasses key protein and nucleotide alignment algorithms like BLAST and Smith-Waterman, essential public databases, RNA biology, and various approaches for DNA and RNA sequencing.

A new, large-scale circRNA detection benchmarking studies has just been published in Nature Methods, including our circtools circRNA detection suite. The study is the largest to date including 16 circRNA detection tools. The paper is a very good read for everyone interested in optimizing circRNA detection accuracy and efficacy.

Vivien Kmietczyk from the lab of Mirko Völkers in Heidelberg, Germany just published her newest paper, “Ythdf2 regulates cardiac remodeling through its mRNA target transcripts” in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology! Congratulations! In the study we found that m6A the reader protein Ythdf2 controls cardiac function and identified a novel mechanism how reader proteins control gene expression and cardiac function.

The University of Arizona Health Sciences Career Development Awards program recently selected Tobias as one of its five 2023 recipients.

Our lab will investigate the potential of this circRNA as a signature molecule, or a biomarker, which can be used to help physicians monitor the presence or progression of atrial fibrillation from a single blood sample. This new circRNA-based biomarker may provide us with a non-invasive and efficient way to detect atrial fibrillation early and potentially develop personalized therapies tailored to an individual’s unique genetic profile.

The lab received a research grant from the Arizona Biomedical Research Centre to examine the roles of different Ribonucleic acid (RNA) species in cardiovascular diseases. In our quest to find novel RNAs for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes the lab will also continue to work on the development of computational methods that can be used by other researchers with the goal of identifying diseases as early as possible.

Our lab was one of eight from the college to be awarded a grant by the Arizona Department of Health Services, Arizona Biomedical Research Commission. In total, $2.8 million in grants were awarded over a three-year period.