Knowledge of evolutionary relationships among species forms the fundamental basis for research in fields ranging from agriculture to ecology to medicine. This project aims to develop new methods and software to rapidly process large genomic datasets and extract information that helps improve our understanding of these relationships. This project will provide extensive bioinformatics training for 3-6undergraduates; computer exercises will be developed to engage hundreds of additional undergraduates in college courses. Research updates and explanations will be provided to the scientific community at annual conferences, and to the general public through the popular science weblog, The Panda?s Thumb (www.pandasthumb.org/).
This research seeks to develop software that will facilitate numerous projects in the field of evolution, including research on non-model organisms and emerging infectious diseases. First, this research will produce a method to identify regions of the genome that are similar enough that they can be compared among diverse groups. Second, new statistical models will be developed to accurately determine the sequence for each species for these regions given the error in current methods of genome sequencing. Third, methods will be developed to automate the identification of data that is useful to determine both recent and ancient evolutionary events. The resulting data can be used in established analytical software platforms. The methods developed by this project will be made available to the scientific community as robust, easy-to-use software at https://github.com/rachelss/SISRS.
