[Colloquium] Xia/MS Presentation/Nov. 4, 2005

[Margaret Jaffey]

This is an announcement of Fangfang Xia's Master's Presentation.

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Date: Friday, November 4, 2005

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Place: Ryerson 277

M.S. Candidate: Fangfang Xia

M.S. Paper Title: Molecular Phylogeny and Computational Evidence for  
Horizontal Gene Transfer in Prokaryotes

Abstract:
As sequence data has accumulated, emphasis in evolutionary molecular  
biology has been placed on constructing gene trees, and from gene  
trees, reconstructing evolutionary trees for species. However,  
relationships between species cannot always be inferred from a single  
gene family. Evolutionary events including horizontal gene transfer  
(HGT) can result in discordances between gene trees and the actual  
species tree. To approach the fundamental problem of inferring  
organismal phylogeny from a set of distinct gene trees, we start with  
an efficient implementation of the problem of reconciling one gene  
tree with one organism tree in a speciation-duplication-loss-transfer  
model. We then use a genetic algorithm to explore the tree space to  
search for trees that reconcile optimally with the reference gene  
tree set. We also present some experiment results with real sequence  
data and discuss the prospect of inferring the "tree of life".

Advisor: Prof. Rick Stevens

A draft copy of Fangfang Xia's MS Paper will be available soon in Ry  
161A.


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Margaret P. Jaffey                             margaret at cs.uchicago.edu
Department of Computer Science
Student Support Rep (Ry 161A)        (773) 702-6011
The University of Chicago                  http://www.cs.uchicago.edu
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