Computational advances and the development of high throughput sequencing methods have led to a virtual explosion of genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data, providing new approaches to problems in biosciences. The computer-aided analysis of these data with new tools from information science comprises the field of Genomics/Bioinformatics. The Genomics/ Bioinformatics option examines the use of computational techniques to convert large amounts of information from DNA sequencing, DNA chips, and other high-throughput experimental methods into useful information that can be shared with other research scientists and medical professionals. The emphasis is on DNA and protein sequence alignment and analysis, and involves computational biology and biological statistics.
Examples of thesis titles:
- A Novel Statistical Method for Identifying Monotonic Relationships in Noisy Plots. Robbie Eberhardt-Garah. Mentor: Dr. Steve Giovannoni, Microbiology.
- Exploring Chromodomain Genes in the Fungus Fusarium graminearum Through Targeted Genetic Manipulation. Alec J. Peters. Mentor: Michael Freitag, Biochemistry and Biophysics.
- Genetic Variation of Renibacterium salmoninarum Genes in Infected Salmonids. Jeffrey Burnett. Mentor: Dr. Daniel Rockey, Biomedical Sciences, Veterinary Medicine.
- Characterization of type three effectors from Pseudomonas syringae pv. Tomato DC 3000. Caitlin Thireault. Mentor: Dr. Jeff Chang.
- An automated approach to computational identification of microRNA genes in plant genomes. Dan Smith. Mentor: Dr. Jim Carrington, Botany and Plant Pathology.
- Automated annotation of Caenorhabditis mitochondrial genomes and phylogenetic analysis. Jessica L. Campbell. Mentor: Dr. Dee R. Denver, Zoology.
