On july 7th Dr. Christain Preusser from the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen will visit us in Regensburg and give a talk entitled: Characterization of the polyadenylation complex in the human parasite Trypanosoma brucei.

For RNA biologists Trypanosmes are a very interesting model system as they use many unusual mechanisms to produce mature mRNAs. This includes extensive editing of transcripts (in the single Trypanosome mitochondrion a substantial number of Uracil residues is not genetically encoded but rather introduced after transcription) and a unique splicing mechanism that involves the joining of sequences from different RNA molecules: trans splicing.

Christian has worked extensively on the identification and characterization of factors that are involved in in RNA processing in trypanosomes and in his talk he will present the latest findings regarding the 3′ end processing and polydenylation machinery.