Graduate Student Alethia Atzinger on gene acquisition in bacteria

University of Pittsburgh Department of Biological Sciences Presents:

Friday Noon Seminar Series 2017-2018

Graduate Student: Alethia Atzinger

Lawrence Lab

Gene acquisition is a primary means through which bacteria evolve; therefore, it is crucial to understand factors that limit the acquisition of genes. The fate of a newly acquired gene depends both on the benefits conferred by its product as well as the potential detriments caused by its insertion into the genome. These costs include any disruption to global, genome-wide patterns of information that may differ between the donor and recipient genomes. This global information (genomic architecture) may be used for efficient genome manipulation, compaction, segregation, and other functions that are not gene-focused. We propose that the periodic distribution of nucleotide motifs on the scale of ~10.5 bp is a type of genomic architecture and that its disruption by gene acquisition limits gene transfer. We have established that ~10.5 bp dinucleotide periodicity is distributed throughout bacterial and archaeal chromosomes and differs meaningfully between genomes both in the value of the period and in the set of motifs that are strongly periodic. We will follow this study by determining whether periodicity is maintained by natural selection, and if it has restricted gene flow between taxa with incompatibility patterns of nucleotide periodicity.

Friday, April 27, 2018

A219B Langley Hall

12:00 PM Seminar

Date

27 Apr 2018

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Events
Graduate Student Presentations

Location

A219B Langley Hall