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Fine-scale phylogeny using a mathematical model of the dynamics of rDNA repeat sequence evolution

Reference	BBS/E/F/00042510
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Ian Roberts
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Quadram Institute Bioscience
Department	Quadram Institute Bioscience Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	23,900
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/09/2008
End date	31/08/2009
Duration	12 months

Abstract

Ever since Charles Darwin introduced his theory for evolution, biologists have been interested in reconstructing the Tree of Life, the tree representing the evolutionary history of all present-day species (http://www.phylo.org/). This is an extremely ambitious goal, and so biologists usually concentrate on constructing evolutionary trees for small sub-collections of present-day species. In the past, the construction of such trees was based on particular characteristics of the species, such as properties of their skeleton or anatomy. However, now that we are able to sequence parts of genomes, or in some cases whole genomes, it is now commonplace for biologists to construct evolutionary trees using DNA data. Consequently, in recent years a whole new theory has grown around building such trees called 'Phylogenetics'. The most important DNA sequence used in phylogenetics is that of the ribosomal DNA repeat unit which has been used to construct the universal tree-of-life. Thanks to recent large-scale genome sequencing projects we now have enough data available to construct far more detailed phylogenies. Thanks to recent advances in computational biology we also now have the means to build rapid and efficient tools to achieve this goal. The aim of this project is to build a mathematical tool to analyse rDNA sequence variation and dynamics at the most basic level. The tool will be applied to yeast and plant data, allowing much finer phylogenies to be constructed than hitherto possible. Yeast genomes provide excellent models for understanding genome dynamics in plants and indeed other eukaryotic genomes, including humans.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	Microbiology, Technology and Methods Development
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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