Computational methods in methaphlogenomics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

With the advent of rapid and cheap sequencing technologies comes the possibility to obtain complete genomes from a large range of organisms sampled across diverse environments. While the functional analysis of such metagenomes has made some recent headway, their evolutionary analysis is still hampered by methodological and computational issues, in particular to be able to analyze genomics data sets containing thousands of sequences. In this proposal I put forward the development of a new field, that of metaphylogenomics, by (i) assessing the performance of metaphylogenomics methods to reconstruct past evolutionary patterns and setting the results in an ecological context; (ii) developing methods that will predict future or emerging metagenomes; and (iii) investigating new directions in population metagenomics. In addition to training at least four graduate students, the proposed research program is expected to advance the field of metaphylogenomics, to benefit public health by improving vaccine design against viral metagenomes, and to provide this new field with a solid theoretical foundation.