Studying the tree of life with genomic data
Abigail Comer
Undergraduate Researcher
Environmental Science Major (College of Arts & Sciences)
Matthew Hahn
Faculty Mentor
Matthew Hahn (Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering)
Project Description
More genetic data is available than ever before, and these data hold great promise for estimating the tree of life. The vast amount of data available presents both opportunities and challenges to traditional approaches for estimating species relationships. One under-utilized source of data in large genomic datasets are duplicated genes, since many popular approaches for building trees were not designed with these in mind. This project will build on previous work in the lab to develop and test methods for using duplicated genes to infer species relationships.
Technology or Computational Component
Students will be involved in analyzing DNA sequence data using programs for inferring species relationships. They will learn to work in a UNIX/Linux-based computing environment, as well as taking advantage of high-performance computing resources at IU. Additionally, they will learn to use python for processing datasets and results.