Recent surprising experimental discoveries have revealed complex and unexpected roles for RNA molecules in most living organisms. Computational tools for the discovery of protein and DNA sequence elements have been actively studied for decades, but RNA molecules evolve in different ways, making the problems of discovering and searching for them very challenging. In this talk, Martin Tompa and Larry Ruzzo, CSE, University of Washington, outline computational tools they have developed for these problems and describe preliminary results from their systematic searches for novel RNA elements in the genomes of hundreds of bacteria. From the Series:CSE Colloquia - 2006