Meeting:

Phylogenetic Analysis With Complex Genome Rearrangement Events


Date14-Jul-2008 ~ 18-Jul-2008
Summary The complexity of genome structural evolution poses many exciting challenges to developers of mathematical models and algorithms. Current tools for phylogenetic analysis of rearrangement events can only be applied to small genomes (such as organelles) and very simple events, hence their usage is very limited. Methods for comparative mapping are primarily descriptive and are poor tools for studying the major processes in the structural evolution of eukaryote genomes. This is the first meeting of the participants of a project, recently funded by the NIH (award number 1R01GM078991-01), that grew out of the NESCent sabbatical of Dr. Jijun Tang (Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina), who leads the project. Additional participants include Yiting Yang (Mathematics, University of South Carolina), and Todd Vision (Biology, University of North Carolina), and students and postdocs from their respective institutions. The investigators are engaged in mathematical modeling, theoretical analysis, algorithm design, high-performance implementation, and testing on benchmark datasets, of genome comparisons in the presence of complex evolutionary events, particularly gene duplication and loss.