Edward Rice, PhD Candidate, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics

Tuesday, May 15, 2018 – 2:00pm

Location – Biomedical Sciences, Room 300

Host – Professor Ed Green

Abstract:  Technologies used to sequence and assemble genomes have developed rapidly in the past ten years, such that the money and time required to sequence a genome have both fallen by a factor of 10,000 during that period. This has given scientists new tools to study a wide variety of questions in biology. During my graduate studies, I worked on three different projects that involved collecting genomic data with these new technologies to answer biological questions or provide resources for other scientists to do so. The first of these projects is my work on the role of temperature-dependent sex determination in the American alligator. Unlike in humans, the sex of an alligator is determined by the temperature at which its egg is incubated. I used a new long-range genome assembly, RNA sequencing, and differential expression analysis to test a hypothesis about the role of estrogen in temperature-dependent sex determination. The second project is the! assembly of a new reference genome for the domestic horse. A reference assembly of the domestic horse genome was released in 2007 using the best genomic technologies available at the time. I used data from many new technologies that were not available in 2007 to assemble a new reference genome with improved contiguity, completeness, and accuracy.

The last project I worked on as part of my dissertation research involves learning about how a genetic difference between modern humans and Neanderthals makes human brains unique. While Neanderthals were extremely genetically similar to modern humans, they had a different version of the gene NOVA1, which regulates splicing during brain development.