Andrea Tanzer

hi, my name is andrea and I am a PhD student at the institute for theoretical chemistry (TBI) in vienna, austria.

I studied biology/genetics at the university of vienna. Towards the end of my study I discovered bioinformatics and decided to do my master thesis on genomic surveys for RNA genes. Since then I have been analysing microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs on the computer. But hunting genes is only half of the story. What I am interested in is the evolution and origin of these regulatory RNAs and the mechanisms behind it. Innovation of miRNAs, for instance, is an ongoing process. And it seems as if novel miRNAs appear at distinct positions in metazoan phylogeny, e.g. the advent of vertebrates.

Several classes of ncRNAs have been described so far. All of them interact with either other ncRNAs, mRNAs or even DNA. And this is why I applied for the csss06: to learn about interaction networks. And because I also enjoy experimental work, I will spend a year at Gunter Wagner's lab at the dept. for ecology and developmental biology at yale right after the csss06.

my home at the TBI