EAGER: Developing bioinformatics tools for the application of next-generation sequencing technologies to phylogeography.

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)." In the 37 years since the DNA sequence of a gene was first identified, biologists have benefited from several waves of technological advancement in sequencing technologies. The latest of these, sequence-by-synthesis, offers dramatic improvements to both the amount and quality of data collected, and allows biologists to generate genomic data in non-model organisms for the first time. The greatest impediment to the adoption of the novel technology is computational; particularly software for post-run bioinformatics processing. This proposal will develop software that facilitates investigations into the genetic diversity within and between species. Software will be tested on next-generation sequence data collected to augment existing projects in the labs of the principal investigators; these projects seek to understand the process of speciation in organisms from North and South America. This research will serve as a catalyst for the adoption of next-generation sequence data in phylogeography and will also benefit evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation biology. The proposed research will provide training and valuable experience for a female bioinformatics graduate student, and will enable other researchers to utilize next-generation sequencing technologies.