Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Study Of Correlations Between The Definition And Application Of The Gene Ontology, Yuji Mo

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When using the Gene Ontology (GO), nucleotide and amino acid sequences are annotated by terms in a structured and controlled vocabulary organized into relational graphs. The usage of the vocabulary (GO terms) in the annotation of these sequences may diverge from the relations defined in the ontology. We measure the consistency of the use of GO terms by comparing GO's defined structure to the terms' application. To do this, we first use synthetic data with different characteristics to understand how these characteristics influence the correlation values determined by various similarity measures. Using these results as a baseline, we found that …

Protein Structure – Based Method For Identification Of Horizontal Gene Transfer In Bacteria, Swetha Billa

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Horizontal Gene Transfer is defined as the movement of genetic material from one strain of species to another. Bacteria, being an asexual organism were always believed to transfer genes vertically. But recent studies provide evidence that shows bacteria can also transfer genes horizontally.

HGT plays a major role in evolution and medicine. It is the major contributor in bacterial evolution, enabling species to acquire genes to adapt to the new environments. Bacteria are also believed to develop drug resistance to antibiotics through the phenomenon of HGT. Therefore further study of HGT and its implications is necessary to understand the effects …