Tyler Alioto's Home Page

I have been a postdoctoral researcher in the Genome Bioinformatics Laboratory since November, 2004. My general research interests include mechanisms of molecular evolution and problems in genome annotation and analysis. More specifically, I am interested in the co-evolution of spliceosomal introns and the pre-mRNA splicing machinery. I have been particularly focused on the minor U12-dependent spliceosome and the introns it operates on.

For more on my non-scientific interests and activities, please visit my personal homepage at www.kyotoalioto.com.

email: tyler.alioto@crg.es

Research

My research is oriented toward understanding how eukaryotic cells process pre-mRNA transcripts. I am particularly interested in the evolution and mechanics of the minor (U12 snRNP dependent) splicing pathway, which used for the splicing of small fraction of all spliceosomal introns. I have developed software tools for their computational identification (see GeneID v1.3 below) and a database (U12DB) that serves to catalog U12 introns in various sequenced genomes.

I am also more generally interested in the challenges of computational gene prediction and genome annotation. My dissertation work on several large clustered multigene families (odorant receptors) inspired me to move into the field of genome bioinformatics. They represent a unique problem/opportunity for gene prediction and annotation pipelines. I have since found that there are many other such challenges to take on...