EST-based detection and analysis of mammalian transcripts

Acknowledgments My first days in berlin were actually my first days outside India. That had quite an impact on my ability to get adapted to the new environment. But for that matter, the CMB department of Max Planck Institute was a very good choice. The group members were extremely friendly and easily approachable for both personal as well as work-related issues. To start with the acknowledgments I thank my supervisor, Martin Vingron. I am most grateful to Martin for offering me an opportunity to work under his supervision. His excellence at work as well as clarity of ideas was obvious to me beforehand. Additionally he has proved to be a fantastic supervisor both in terms of project-related and personal guidance. I express my deepest gratitude to Stefan Haas. He has been my mentor throughout. I sincerely appreciate his patience with me especially during the paper-writing sessions (read cycles). I sincerely thank my collaborators Dorothea Zink and Bernd Korn for providing a close experimental support to my computational work. Bernd has also been a critical and very helpful member of my Phd committee. I deeply appreciate the company of all past and present CMB group members. The discussions during the weekly group meetings have been very fruitful for the advancement of my project as well as for the broadening of my knowledge-base. I would also like to thank our system administrator, Wilhelm Ruesing. He has been relentless and exceptionally prompt in cracking down on infrastructural problems. On a personal note, special thanks goes to Birgit Pils and Johanna Holbrook for great help during my initial days. Additionally, I am thankful to my friends in Germany es-have been very motivating during the inevitable low periods of graduate research. Lastly but perhaps the most significantly, I appreciate the support of my mother before and during my graduate studies. I would have been nowhere without her enormous struggle for my education.