Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Biochemistry Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Theses/Dissertations

Genetics and Genomics

Computational biology

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry

Towards More Complete Metagenomic Analyses Through Circularized Genomes And Conjugative Elements, Benjamin R. Joris Aug 2022

Towards More Complete Metagenomic Analyses Through Circularized Genomes And Conjugative Elements, Benjamin R. Joris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Advancements in sequencing technologies have revolutionized biological sciences and led to the emergence of a number of fields of research. One such field of research is metagenomics, which is the study of the genomic content of complex communities of bacteria. The goal of this thesis was to contribute computational methodology that can maximize the data generated in these studies and to apply these protocols human and environmental metagenomic samples.

Standard metagenomic analyses include a step for binning of assembled contigs, which has previously been shown to exclude mobile genetic elements, and I demonstrated that this phenomenon extends to all conjugative …


A Unified Framework For The Prioritization Of Variants Of Uncertain Significance In Hereditary Breast And Ovarian Cancer Patients, Natasha G. Caminsky Sep 2015

A Unified Framework For The Prioritization Of Variants Of Uncertain Significance In Hereditary Breast And Ovarian Cancer Patients, Natasha G. Caminsky

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A significant proportion of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) patients receive uninformative genetic testing results, an issue exacerbated by the overwhelming quantity of variants of uncertain significance identified. This thesis describes a framework where, aside from protein coding changes, information theory (IT)-based sequence analysis identifies and prioritizes pathogenic variants occurring within sequence elements predicted to be recognized by proteins involved in mRNA splicing, transcription, and untranslated region binding and structure. To support the utilization of IT analysis, we established IT-based variant interpretation accuracy by performing a comprehensive review of mutations altering mRNA splicing in rare and common diseases.

Custom …