Location:Gilman 132
When: January 25th at 1:30 p.m.
Title: Transcript Homology Relationships and Phylogeny Reconstruction
Abstract: Alternative splicing is a ubiquitous process in eukaryotes, which allows the production of distinct transcripts from the same gene by joining different combinations of exons. It has raised interest in the last few decades because of its significant role in gene diversification, as well as in cancer. The study of the evolution of transcripts across a set of homologous genes provides additional information on gene evolution, such as the identification of conserved isoforms, the history of isoform gains and losses along gene phylogenies, and the evolution of alternative splicing. We will present a unified view of transcript phylogeny reconstruction problems, and we will describe current challenges and existing solutions, including a set of methods and a database we have developed to study transcript evolution.
Bio: Aïda Ouangraoua (Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2007, Université de Bordeaux, France) is a professor at Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Computational and Biological Complexity. Her research group focuses on developing models and algorithms to understand the intertwined evolution of genomes, genes, and RNA transcripts. Aïda is also engaged in community service, currently as an associate editor for Bioinformatics Advances, Journal of Computational Biology, and Molecular Biology and Evolution, and she is a regular PC member or chair of top bioinformatics conferences such as ISMB, WABI, RECOMB-CG, and GLBIO.
Zoom link: https://wse.zoom.us/j/94601022340