Dr Jonathan M. Mudge

Former Senior Computer Biologist at the Sanger Institute

Alumni

This person is a member of Sanger Institute Alumni.

My work concerns the description of gene and transcript structures, chiefly as part of the human GENCODE project. My particular focus is on furthering our understanding of transcriptional complexity and how this relates to human biology, especially through the intergation of next generation technology datasets. I am a Team Leader within the HAVANA group.

My work seeks to address one of the most profound questions in modern genomics: which transcripts are functional, and how do they function? I use a wide variety of experimental datasets to provide insights into transcript functionality for the human and mouse GENCODE projects, from RNAseq to mass spectrometry. Furthermore, I am particuarly interested in the evolution of transcriptional complexity (having an educational background in evolutionary biology), and use comparative analysis as a powerful tool for the annotation of functionality. More recently I have become focused on medical genetics, asking how an understanding of this complexity can be used to gain insights into the nature and consequences of human variation. To this end, an important part of my work is to explore ways to increase the sophistication of our GENCODE genesets while simultaneously improving their usability. I am also committed to scientific communication, regularly presenting our work at international conferences, and helping to organise workshops and outreach events within the community.

Ultimately, my goal is to help bridge the information gap between our in silico geneset and the actual transcriptome as it exists in nature.