A Bioinformatics Framework to Understand the Fate of Duplicated Genes in Evolution

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

During the course of evolution, species undergo genomic mutations that allow them to gain distinct traits and biological functions. Gene duplication is one such event and is largely responsible for today's biodiversity. When a gene is duplicated, it creates a redundant copy that is free to evolve and develop new functions. However, not all genes go through this fate, as some copies may share the same function as their originator or become non-functional. Understanding the mechanisms and fates of duplicated genes is therefore crucial to gain knowledge on how biological functions are gained and lost. The main objective of this international collaboration is to develop a computational framework to infer the fate of duplicated genes from genomic data. We will devise novel models and algorithms for this task and we will evaluate our framework on a realistic simulator of biological evolution, followed by applications on real data. This collaboration combines the expertise of Dr. Guillaume Beslon (ENS-Lyon) for the simulation of realistic evolution, and Dr. Manuel Lafond (U. de Sherbrooke) for the creation of efficient inference and analysis algorithms. This proposal will improve our fundamental understanding of evolution, which can have several practical applications in biology. For instance, this can help finding genes shared by human and animals for drug-testing, or predicting the evolution of viruses and tumors. Our research will also impact the computer science side of bioinformatics by improving current evolutionary models and providing more realistic simulations to software developers. Finally, this proposal will reinforce Canada's leadership position in comparative genomics.