Genome Informatics & Evolutionary Biology

The availability of complete genome sequences from diverse organisms offers unprecedented opportunities to understand patterns and processes of evolutionary change through comparative genomics. Our faculty are addressing a variety of problems in genome evolution. Several faculty members have an interest in gene duplication and its consequences for the evolution of new function, as applied to: 1) locus-specific duplications; and 2) genome-wide duplications that have occurred through a variety of mechanisms,including polyploidy. Eukaryotic genomes are also characterized by an abundance of mobile genetic elements. Our faculty are interested in the coevolution between host and "parasite" and the consequences of transposition in shaping the eukaryotic genome.

Underlying many of the proposed investigations are the analyses of related, duplicate or repetitive sequences. This presents challenges both in phylogenetic reconstruction (determining orthologous and paralogous relationships) and in elucidating the acquisition of new functions. Several faculty are refining algorithms for phylogenetic analyses and determining the types of molecular data most informative for phylogenetic reconstruction. Comparative analyses of related gene sequences, particularly those for which structural information is available, are also being used to infer aspects of the relationship between evolutionary change and functional constraint. These approaches offer important insights into protein and RNA function.