3RD SUMMER PROGRAM IN ALTERNATIVE SPLICING

We are looking for 10 natural science or medical undergraduate students for a four-week paid work/study summer program, sponsored by a European Commission grant.

The objective of this summer program is to create a manually maintained computer database of alternative exons. Relevant information will be extracted from pre-selected articles. Students do not need to have extensive computer experience or be knowledgeable about splicing. Training in the basics of alternative splicing, as well as in how to use the computer software, will be offered by daily one hour short seminars given by local and European experts.

The summer school will take place in Erlangen, Germany from August 29th to September 23th, 2005. Foreign as well as local students are encouraged to apply. Since the literature to be included in the database is in English, students must be able to read English well.

This program will continue, sponsored by the Network of Excellence on pre-mRNA splicing (EURASNET), funded by the European Union. Depending on the quality of the work submitted by students, they may be asked to return and authorship is possible. Results of this work have been published, listing some of the students as authors (e.g. Stamm et al., Gene, 3;344:1-20, 2005. The school will cover costs of travel up to 500€ and pay an additional 1,000€ stipend.

If you are interested in applying for this summer program, please send two letters of recommendation, a copy of your undergraduate grades, and a brief letter stating why you would like to work on this project to:

Prof. Dr. Stamm
c/o Yesheng Tang
Institut fuer Biochemie
Fahrstrasse 17
D-91054 Erlangen
Email:

For more information about the database, please refer to:
• Stamm, S., J. Zhu, K. Nakai, P. Stoilov, O. Stoss, and M. Q. Zhang. 2000. An alternative-exon database and its statistical analysis. DNA Cell Biol 19:739-56.
• Thanaraj, T. A., and S. Stamm. 2003. Prediction and Statistical Analysis of Alternatively Spliced Exons. Prog. Mol. Sub. Biol.:1-31.
• http://www.ebi.ac.uk/asd/index.html
• Thanaraj, T.A., Stamm, S., Clark, F., Riethoven, J.J., Le Texier, V. and Muilu, J.: ASD: the Alternative Splicing Database. Nucleic Acids Res 32 Database issue (2004) D64-69.
• Stamm, S., Ben-Ari, S., Rafalska, I., Tang, Y., Zhang, Z., Toiber, D., Thanaraj, T.A. and Soreq, H., 2005. Function of alternative splicing. Gene 344C, 1-20.

The Alternative Splicing Database Consortium
Prof. Dr. Stefan Stamm
Institut für Biochemie
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Fahrstraße 17
D-91052 Erlangen
DEUTSCHLAND