Roland K. Hartmann is Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). He studied Biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin where in 1988 he received the Ernst Reuter award for outstanding Ph.D. theses. His research interests include natural ribozymes, particularly ribonuclease P, interactions of RNAs with proteins and small ligands, aptamers, antisense and RNA interference. Albrecht Bindereif is Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Giessen (Germany) since 1999. He studied Biochemistry in Tübingen and at the University of California, Berkeley. His postdoctoral work was done in Michael Green's laboratory at Harvard University. His research interests focus on the mechanism and regulation of mRNA splicing, both in the mammalian system and in trypanosomes. Astrid Schön received her PhD from the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Würzburg, and was a graduate fellow and postdoctoral associate with Dieter Söll at Yale University. She is currently a lecturer at the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Leipzig (Germany). Her research is focused on RNA metabolism and RNA-protein interactions, and the evolution of complex RNA enzymes. Eric Westhof is Professor of Biophysics at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France) since 1988. He studied in Liège and Regensburg and was a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellow at the University of Wisconsin with M. Sundaralingam. His research is centered on the relationships between sequence, structure, evolution and functions of RNA molecules.

RNA SYNTHESIS
Enyzmatic synthesis, ligation and modification
Chemical synthesis
STRUCTURE DETERMINATION
Sequence determination
Secondary and tertiary structure determination
Footprinting techniques
Identification of interacting proteins and nucleic acids
Nucleotide analog interference mapping
Atomic structure determination
Spectroscopic studies of RNA structure
GENOMICS & BIOINFORMATICS
Phylogenetic analysis
Structure prediction
Molecular dynamics simulation
RNA mining and RNomics
ANALYSIS OF RNA FUNCTION
Isolation and purification of RNA-binding proteins
Genetic analysis of RNA-binding proteins
Three-hybrid analysis to identify RNA-binding proteins
Analysis of mRNA splice variants
Confocal microscopy studies of intracellular localization
In vitro selection of ribozymes and aptamers
RNA INTERFERENCE
Strategies for in vivo RNAi studies

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