Last semester, I took Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics. It was such a blast! For my final project, I compared hox cluster sequences of humans and other vertebrates with the non vertebrate chordate Amphioxus or Lancelet. Most vertebrates have 4 hox clusters of 14 genes each. Amphioxus has just 1 cluster of 14 genes. It has been known for a while that in the vertebrate line the entire genome was duplicated twice which explains why most have 4 hox clusters. For the most part these genes are well conserved across all chordates. However, the posterior hox genes 10-14 are highly divergent. Therefore, it is not known for sure how many hox genes the ancestral chordate had. It could have had less than 14 and further duplications happened in each line after they diverged or the original chordate could have had 14. I focused on the Amphihox 13 gene to determine it if it was closer to other amphihox genes or to the human hox 13 gene. I conclude that it is most likely closer to the human hox 13 genes and therefore existed in the ancestral chordate.
My final paper is here and the presentation is here.
There is nothing earth shattering here. But, it could be interesting for anyone curious about what bioinformatics is all about.
Next semester, I will be working with my bioinformatics professor to automate bioinformatic analysis using scientific workflows. So, there will definitely be much more on this topic in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment