PostDoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics FY2006

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Project Title: Understanding the Horizontal Transfer of Transposable elements in Grass Nuclear GenomesThis project is awarded under the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biological Informatics Program for 2006. Plant mitochondrial genomes exchange genes across species boundaries (a process known as horizontal transfer), but whether plant nuclear genomes exchange DNA on a similar scale remains an open question. Successful horizontal transfer requires that DNA physically travels from one organism to another and then is incorporated into the recipient genome. Transposable elements (TEs), selfish genetic elements capable of increasing in copy number in their hosts, are good candidates for horizontal transfer because they have active mechanisms to insert themselves into new sites in a genome. This project will survey the exchange of TEs among different species of grasses by identifying and collecting TE sequences from publicly available databases and analyzing the sequences to uncover those elements with a history of horizontal transfer. This project aims to identify both the grasses that share DNA and the families of TEs that are subject to transfer, and in so doing, clarify the mechanisms behind the horizontal transfer of DNA in plants in general. The fellow will work in the lab of Susan Wessler at the University of Georgia where he will gain experience in programming complex and flexible search algorithms, sophisticated motif searching techniques, and mentoring undergraduate independent research or graduate student rotation projects. The project builds on the fellow's background in the evolution of plant mitochondrial genomes by scaling to the plant nuclear genome, which is orders of magnitude larger, gene-rich, and complex. The research will lead to a career and plant comparative genomics.