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Full-Text Articles in Bioinformatics

Flavonol Glucosylation: A Structural Investigation Of The Flavonol Specific 3-O Glucosyltransferase Cp3gt, Aaron S. Birchfield Dec 2023

Flavonol Glucosylation: A Structural Investigation Of The Flavonol Specific 3-O Glucosyltransferase Cp3gt, Aaron S. Birchfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Flavonoid glycosyltransferases (GTs), enzymes integral to plant ecological responses and human pharmacology, necessitate rigorous structural elucidation to decipher their mechanistic function and substrate specificity, particularly given their role in the biotransformation of diverse pharmacological agents and natural products. This investigation delved into a comprehensive exploration of the flavonol 3-O GT from Citrus paradisi (Cp3GT), scrutinizing the impact of a c-terminal c-myc/6x histidine tag on its enzymatic activity and substrate specificity, and successfully achieving its purification to apparent homogeneity. This established a strong foundation for potential future crystallographic and other structure/function analyses. Through the strategic implementation of site-directed mutagenesis, a thrombin …


Predicting Marine Teleost Responses To Ocean Warming And Pollution, Akila Harishchandra Aug 2023

Predicting Marine Teleost Responses To Ocean Warming And Pollution, Akila Harishchandra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ocean warming and pollution are two detrimental anthropogenic factors causing rapid marine ecosystem degradation recorded in the past decades. These factors alter the marine environment intolerable for many marine species, forcing them to either adapt or shift their contemporary habitat ranges to reduce the extinction risk embedded with environmental degradation. Estimating marine species’ habitat range shifts, and their potential for developing adaptive mechanisms are critical for ecosystem conservation and management, human health risk assessment, and climate change vulnerability assessments. Given that, for the first chapter of this thesis, we focused on developing a species distribution model (SDM) integrating marine species …


Novel Insights Into Oligodendrocyte Biology From Developmental Myelination Studies In Autophagy Deficient Mice And Analysis Of Oligodendrocyte Translatome Response To Contusive Spinal Cord Injury., Michael David Forston Aug 2023

Novel Insights Into Oligodendrocyte Biology From Developmental Myelination Studies In Autophagy Deficient Mice And Analysis Of Oligodendrocyte Translatome Response To Contusive Spinal Cord Injury., Michael David Forston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loss of myelin causes severe neurological disorders and functional deficits in white matter injuries (WMI) such as traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). This dissertation is focused on autophagy in OL development and the OL translatome after SCI. Chapter I describes the history of myelin, OL development, and their involvement in neurodegenerative diseases and SCI. The proteostasis network, in particular autophagy, and its contributions to white matter pathology is discussed. It concludes examining advantages and disadvantages of unbiased omics tools, like RiboTag, to study transcriptional/translational landscapes after SCI. Chapter II focuses on autophagy in OPC/OL differentiation, survival, and proper myelination in …


Clustering And Analysis Of G Quadruplex Sequences., Aryan Neupane May 2023

Clustering And Analysis Of G Quadruplex Sequences., Aryan Neupane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

G quadruplex structures are secondary structures located throughout the genome of various organisms with involvement in regulatory functions in different transcription, translation, genome stability, epigenetic regulation as well as cell division. Even with the diverse acknowledgement of G4 structure in vivo, there are no current search tools for G quadruplexes based on already identified G quadruplexes and identified families across different genomes based on sequence diversity. Construction of families of G4 sequences and identifying their polymorphisms within disease and disorders will lead to a better understanding of their functional roles and will further research into the biophysical modeling of interactions …


Dna Methylation And The Response To Infection In Introduced House Sparrows, Melanie Gibson Jan 2023

Dna Methylation And The Response To Infection In Introduced House Sparrows, Melanie Gibson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Epigenetics is the study of molecular modification of a genome without changing its base pairs. The most studied type of epigenetic mechanism is DNA methylation, which is capable of turning a gene “on” or “off.” Epigenetic potential is the capacity to which an individual can have methylation on its genome. The more CpGs available, the greater the epigenetic potential. In invasive species, genetic variation has been observed to be paradoxical: not much of it exists on a genomic level, but epigenetically, phenotypic variation can occur. The focus on shift in gene expression in this study is on Toll-Like Receptor 4 …


Identification And Characterization Of Genetic Elements That Regulate A C-Di-Gmp Mediated Multicellular Trait In Pseudomonas Fluorescens, Collin Kessler Aug 2022

Identification And Characterization Of Genetic Elements That Regulate A C-Di-Gmp Mediated Multicellular Trait In Pseudomonas Fluorescens, Collin Kessler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microbial communities contain densely packed cells where competition for space and resources are fierce. These communities are generally referred to as biofilms and provide advantages to individual cells against immunological and antimicrobial intervention, dehydration, and predation. High intracellular pools of cyclic diguanylate monophosphate (c-di-GMP) cause cells to aggregate during biofilm formation through the production of diverse extracellular polymers. Genes that encode c-di-GMP catalytic enzymes are commonly mutated during chronic infections where opportunists display enhanced resistance to phagocytosis and antibiotics. Our lab uses an emergent multicellular trait in the model organism Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1 to study the emergence of c-di-GMP mutations …


Evaluation And Application Of Crispr-Cas12a-Based Systems For Amphibian Detection From Dietary And Environmental Dna, Macie Chess May 2022

Evaluation And Application Of Crispr-Cas12a-Based Systems For Amphibian Detection From Dietary And Environmental Dna, Macie Chess

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current methods for monitoring biodiversity are hindered by detection efficiencies or rely on expensive laboratory equipment. The goal of this study was to evaluate the application of a CRISPR-Cas12a-based system for the species-specific detection of amphibians from dietary and environmental DNA samples. A Cas-12a-based platform was designed and analyzed for the fluorescent detection of three salamander species; Desmognathus fuscus, D. ochropheaus, and Erycia bislineata. This system was applied to the identification of salamander DNA extracted from the fecal sacs of nestling Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia monticola), amplified with PCR primers targeting the CYT B mtDNA gene, and compared to DNA metabarcoding. …


A Review Of Current Methods In Avian Dietary Analysis And Their Integrated Application To Characterize The Trophic Niche Of Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia Motacilla)., Brandon Hoenig May 2022

A Review Of Current Methods In Avian Dietary Analysis And Their Integrated Application To Characterize The Trophic Niche Of Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia Motacilla)., Brandon Hoenig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing a species’ dietary composition presents an avenue to understand many facets of its ecological niche and can provide essential information for the species’ long-term conservation. To date, the vast majority of diet studies have relied on direct identification of prey during foraging observations or from diet samples to characterize the dietary habits of birds. However, advancements in laboratory-based approaches have revolutionized the field of trophic ecology by allowing researchers to indirectly infer dietary habits with higher resolution across greater time scales. Here, I apply two of these laboratory-based techniques, namely DNA metabarcoding and stable isotope analysis, to characterize the …


Genomic Tools And Models For Investigating The Role Of Germline Diversity In Mouse Antibody Repertoire Development., Justin T. Kos May 2022

Genomic Tools And Models For Investigating The Role Of Germline Diversity In Mouse Antibody Repertoire Development., Justin T. Kos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Given the diversity and complexity within immunoglobulin (IG) loci, effective mouse models first require characterization of intra-strain differences and construction of high-quality reference assemblies for IG loci in several representative strains. To understand light chain germline diversity across biomedically significant mouse strains, we profiled the expressed IGK and IGL repertoires of 18 commonly used laboratory mouse strains using AIRR-seq. Across strains, we observed germline IGKV sequences shared by three different IGK haplotypes and a more conserved IGLV germline repertoire among common laboratory strains. Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) Single-Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing was used to sequence and assemble bacterial artificial chromosomes (BAC) …


Discovering The Pathways And Go Terms Associated With Mettl3 Modified Circular Rnas In The Embryonic Cerebral Cortex Of Mice., Dunia Zedan May 2022

Discovering The Pathways And Go Terms Associated With Mettl3 Modified Circular Rnas In The Embryonic Cerebral Cortex Of Mice., Dunia Zedan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Circular RNAs (cirRNAs) are a class of RNA molecules that result from the alternative back-splicing events that join the 3’ and 5’ ends normally present in the linear RNA molecules. It has been published that cirRNAs can function as gene regulators and as “microRNA sponges” to negatively control the functions of microRNAs. While many studies have been conducted to understand the regulatory roles of Mettl3 in linear messenger RNAs, fewer contributions were applied to understand the impact of Mettl3 modified cirRNAs on gene expression and on the regulation of different KEGG biological pathways and GO terms. This thesis was conducted …


Classification Of Breast Cancer Nottingham Prognostic Index Using High-Dimensional Embedding And Convolutional Neural Networks, Li Zhou Feb 2022

Classification Of Breast Cancer Nottingham Prognostic Index Using High-Dimensional Embedding And Convolutional Neural Networks, Li Zhou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work builds a prediction model for multi-omics breast cancer Nottingham Prognostics Index (NPI) classes. Rapid development in next-generation sequencing led to the ability to measure different biological indicators called multi-omics data. The availability of multi-omics data sparked the challenge of integrating and analyzing these various biological measures to understand the progression of the diseases. High-dimensional embedding techniques are used to present the features in the lower dimension, that is a 2-dimensional map. This thesis presents a supervised learning method used to predict breast cancer NPI. The objectives of this research are (i) build a diagnosis system for breast cancer …


Development Of Genomic Resources In Vitis Riparia For Discoveries On Pre- And Post-Transcriptional Molecular Regulators Of Early Induction Into Endodormancy, Michael Robben Jan 2022

Development Of Genomic Resources In Vitis Riparia For Discoveries On Pre- And Post-Transcriptional Molecular Regulators Of Early Induction Into Endodormancy, Michael Robben

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Grapevine is one of the most important fruit crops in the world, responsible for billions in global sales annually. The largest threat to grapevine and other crop production is global climate change resulting human activities. This brings unpredictable and drastic changes in ambient air temperatures to many climates in which grapes are grown. Lower temperatures and inclement weather are already responsible for millions in lost revenue due to tissue damage of established plants. Thus, protecting grapevine crops from weather-related damage is the biggest concern to growers aside from pathogen- and diseaserelated crop damage. The primary mechanism for winter survival in …


Computational And Biochemical Characterizations Of Anhydrobiosis-Related Intrinsically Disordered Proteins., Brett R. Janis Dec 2021

Computational And Biochemical Characterizations Of Anhydrobiosis-Related Intrinsically Disordered Proteins., Brett R. Janis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anhydrobiosis is the remarkable phenomenon of “life without water”. It is a common technique found in plant seeds, and a rare technique utilized by some animals to temporarily stop the clock of life and enter a stasis for up to several millennia by removing all of their cellular water. If this phenomenon can be replicated, then biological and medical materials could be stored at ambient temperatures for centuries, which would address research challenges as well as enhance the availability of medicine in areas of the world where refrigeration, freezing, and cold-chain infrastructure are not developed or infeasible. Furthermore, modifying crop …


A Method For Identifying Ancient Introgression Between Caballine And Non-Caballine Equids Using Whole Genome High Throughput Data., Kalpani De Silva Dec 2021

A Method For Identifying Ancient Introgression Between Caballine And Non-Caballine Equids Using Whole Genome High Throughput Data., Kalpani De Silva

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Introgression is one of the main mechanisms that transfer adapted alleles between species. The advantageous variants will get positively selected and retained in the recipient population while rest of the variants undergo negative selection. When analyzing horse genome, two alleles were found in CXCL16 gene, one associated with susceptibility and one with resistance to developing persistent shedding of the Equine Arteritis Virus. The two alleles differ by 4 non-synonymous variants in exon 1 of the gene. Comparison with 3 non-caballine equids (zebras, asses and hemiones) revealed that one haplotype was almost identical to the haplotype found in non-caballines while the …


Deep Learning Applications In Medical Bioinformatics, Ziad Omar Oct 2021

Deep Learning Applications In Medical Bioinformatics, Ziad Omar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After a patient’s breast cancer diagnosis, identifying breast cancer lymph node metastases is one of the most important and critical factor that is directly related to the patient’s survival. The traditional way to examine the existence of cancer cells in the breast lymph nodes is through a lymph node procedure, biopsy. The procedure process is time-consuming for the patient and the provider, costly, and lacks accuracy as not every lymph node is examined. The intent of this study is to develop an artificial neural network (ANNs) that would map genetic biomarkers to breast lymph node classes using ANNs. The neural …


A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba, Thomas Alexander Oct 2021

A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba, Thomas Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we are interested in finding the best drugs that can be repurposed for the disease and able to find the adverse effects such drugs that are FDA-Approved. Developing an effective drug can be a time-consuming and expensive crucible method. Network-based machine learning methods are used for predicting a given drug for A that can be used for B. It aims at finding new indications for already existing drugs and therefore increases the available therapeutic choices at a fraction of the cost of new drug development. The perturbation gene expression data corresponding to the MCF7 cell line was …


Deciphering The Perpetual Fight Between Virus And Host: Utilizing Bioinformatics To Elucidate The Host's Genetic Mechanisms That Influence Jc Polyomavirus Infection, Michael P. Wilczek Aug 2021

Deciphering The Perpetual Fight Between Virus And Host: Utilizing Bioinformatics To Elucidate The Host's Genetic Mechanisms That Influence Jc Polyomavirus Infection, Michael P. Wilczek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

JC polyomavirus (JCPyV) is a human-specific pathogen that infects 50-80% of the population, and can cause a deadly, demyelinating disease, known as progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). In most of the population, JCPyV persistently infects the kidneys but during immunosuppression, it can reactivate and spread to the central nervous system (CNS), causing PML. In the CNS, JCPyV targets two cell types, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes. Due to the hallmark pathology of oligodendrocyte lysis observed in disease, oligodendrocytes were thought to be the main cell type involved during JCPyV infection. However, recent evidence suggests that astrocytes are targeted by the virus and act …


Deep Learning Applications In Medical Bioinformatics, Ziad Omar Jul 2021

Deep Learning Applications In Medical Bioinformatics, Ziad Omar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After a patient’s breast cancer diagnosis, identifying breast cancer lymph node metastases is one of the most important and critical factor that is directly related to the patient’s survival. The traditional way to examine the existence of cancer cells in the breast lymph nodes is through a lymph node procedure, biopsy. The procedure process is time-consuming for the patient and the provider, costly, and lacks accuracy as not every lymph node is examined. The intent of this study is to develop an artificial neural network (ANNs) that would map genetic biomarkers to breast lymph node classes using ANNs. The neural …


A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba Thomas Alexander Jul 2021

A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba Thomas Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we are interested in finding the best drugs that can be repurposed for the disease and able to find the adverse effects such drugs that are FDA-Approved. Developing an effective drug can be a time-consuming and expensive crucible method. Network-based machine learning methods are used for predicting a given drug for A that can be used for B. It aims at finding new indications for already existing drugs and therefore increases the available therapeutic choices at a fraction of the cost of new drug development. The perturbation gene expression data corresponding to the MCF7 cell line was …


Simulation Of The Interaction Between Striated Muscle Unc-45 And Transcription Factor Gata-4, Drake Alexander Duncan May 2021

Simulation Of The Interaction Between Striated Muscle Unc-45 And Transcription Factor Gata-4, Drake Alexander Duncan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Striated Muscle UNC-45, also known as UNC-45b, is an important protein that acts as a chaperone for myosin in cardiac and skeletal muscles, binding to myosin at its C-terminal UCS domain and regulating its assembly into thick filaments and sarcomeric structures. The UCS domain contains a large loop that is believed to be the first point of interaction between myosin and UNC-45b. GATA-4 is an essential transcription factor that facilitates transcription of several genes in cardiac development, particularly alpha-heavy chain myosin in heart tissue. Recently, studies have shown that there is interaction of GATA-4 with UNC-45b and that GATA-4 binds …


Development, Design, And Utilization Of A Reflective Based Photoplethysmography Sensor, Madeline Mazjanis Dec 2020

Development, Design, And Utilization Of A Reflective Based Photoplethysmography Sensor, Madeline Mazjanis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plethysmography refers to the dynamic measurement of biological tissue volumes that, for example, may change due to fluctuations in blood volume. Photoplethysmography (PPG) makes use of the attenuation of light penetrating into vascular tissues to determine these changes in blood volume. Modern PPG is an optical technique involving low cost photosensors and light emitting diodes (LED), and is capable of measuring multiple biological vitals simultaneously. For example, in addition to heart rate determination, PPG devices can be used as pulse oximeters, capable of calculating the blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) through a series of simple optical calculations performed on either reflectance …


Statistical Approaches Of Gene Set Analysis With Quantitative Trait Loci For High-Throughput Genomic Studies., Samarendra Das Dec 2020

Statistical Approaches Of Gene Set Analysis With Quantitative Trait Loci For High-Throughput Genomic Studies., Samarendra Das

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, gene set analysis has become the first choice for gaining insights into the underlying complex biology of diseases through high-throughput genomic studies, such as Microarrays, bulk RNA-Sequencing, single cell RNA-Sequencing, etc. It also reduces the complexity of statistical analysis and enhances the explanatory power of the obtained results. Further, the statistical structure and steps common to these approaches have not yet been comprehensively discussed, which limits their utility. Hence, a comprehensive overview of the available gene set analysis approaches used for different high-throughput genomic studies is provided. The analysis of gene sets is usually carried out based on …


Modified-Half-Normal Distribution And Different Methods To Estimate Average Treatment Effect., Jingchao Sun Dec 2020

Modified-Half-Normal Distribution And Different Methods To Estimate Average Treatment Effect., Jingchao Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three projects related to Modified-Half-Normal distribution and causal inference. In my first project, a new distribution called Modified-Half-Normal distribution was introduced. I explored a few of its distributional properties, the procedures for generating random samples based on Bayesian approaches, and the parameter estimation based on the method of moments. The second project deals with the problem of selection bias of average treatment effect (ATE) if we use the observational data. I combined the propensity score based inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) method and the directed acyclic graph (DAG) to solve this problem. The third project …


A Genomic Analysis Of Bobcat Populations In North America With A Comparison To The Canada Lynx: An Assessment Of Local Adaptation To Unique Ecoregions And Phylogeography, Jennifer C. Broderick May 2020

A Genomic Analysis Of Bobcat Populations In North America With A Comparison To The Canada Lynx: An Assessment Of Local Adaptation To Unique Ecoregions And Phylogeography, Jennifer C. Broderick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are an ecologically and genetically diverse species with a large contiguous range throughout North America. The species not only has a wide array of phenotypic variation compared to other mammals, but shows marked adaptability across ecozones with differing ecological influences. It is these various selective pressures in distinctive parts of the continent that have likely led to localized adaptations within the bobcat metapopulations. The species is also marked by its ability to maintain connectivity and populations in anthropogenically developed areas, an advantage it has over other felids, including its close relative the Canada lynx ( …


Plasticity And The Impact Of Increasing Temperature On A Tropical Ectotherm, Adam A. Rosso Jan 2020

Plasticity And The Impact Of Increasing Temperature On A Tropical Ectotherm, Adam A. Rosso

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organisms may respond to climate change through behavior, genetic adaptation, and/or phenotypic plasticity. Tropical ectotherms are thought to be especially vulnerable to climate change because most have a narrow range of thermal tolerance while living close to their upper thermal tolerance limits. Additionally, many tropical species live in closed-canopy forests, which provide homogenous thermal landscapes that prevent behavioral compensation for stressfully warm temperatures. Finally, tropical ectotherms are thought to have decreased capacity for phenotypic plasticity because they have evolved in thermally stable environments. We tested gene expression patterns and phenotypic plasticity in the Panamanian slender anole by a) measuring changes …


Small Rnas: Big Roles In White Mold Infecting Crop Plants, Achal Neupane Jan 2020

Small Rnas: Big Roles In White Mold Infecting Crop Plants, Achal Neupane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In eukaryotes, small RNAs (sRNAs) are key regulators of RNA silencing which is also known as RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is an essential mechanism known in plants, animals and fungi that regulates various biological activities, including defense against foreign nucleic acids and viruses. Fungal pathogens, such as Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, severely limit crop production in all parts of the world. Sclerotinia sclerotiorum cause white mold infection, affecting all dicotyledonous plants including many economically important field crops, vegetables, and floriculture. There does not exist known host resistance, and only limited chemical control can be achieved. Given the growing cost and environmental impacts …


The Identification Of Long Non-Coding Rna Zfas1 Through An Exploratory Rna-Sequencing Analysis And Its Association With Epithelial-To-Mesenchymal Transition In Colon Cancer Adenocarcinoma., Stephen J. O'Brien Dec 2019

The Identification Of Long Non-Coding Rna Zfas1 Through An Exploratory Rna-Sequencing Analysis And Its Association With Epithelial-To-Mesenchymal Transition In Colon Cancer Adenocarcinoma., Stephen J. O'Brien

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Colorectal adenocarcinoma is the fourth most common cancer diagnosed worldwide and is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. This dissertation performed an exploratory RNA-sequencing analysis comparing gene expression between colon adenocarcinoma tissue and paired normal colon epithelium. After identification of a number of lncRNAs that were increased in expression in colon adenocarcinoma compared to normal colon epithelium, we aimed to validate the expression and investigate their function in vitro. Specifically, we focused on the lncRNA ZFAS1 and its association with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. These studies found the following: 1. Seven candidate lncRNAs were identified from the exploratory RNA-sequencing analysis to …


Designing And Sample Size Calculation In Presence Of Heterogeneity In Biological Studies Involving High-Throughput Data., Sudhir Srivastava Aug 2019

Designing And Sample Size Calculation In Presence Of Heterogeneity In Biological Studies Involving High-Throughput Data., Sudhir Srivastava

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The designing and determination of sample size are important for conducting high-throughput biological experiments such as proteomics experiments and RNA-Seq expression studies, thus leading to better understanding of complex mechanisms underlying various biological processes. The variations in the biological data or technical approaches to data collection lead to heterogeneity for the samples under study. We critically worked on the issues of technical and biological heterogeneity. The quantitative measurements based on liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) often suffer from the problem of missing values (MVs) and data heterogeneity. We considered a proteomics data set generated from human kidney …


Response Of Early Life Stage Homarus Americanus To Ocean Warming And Acidification: An Interpopulation Comparison, Maura K. Niemisto Aug 2019

Response Of Early Life Stage Homarus Americanus To Ocean Warming And Acidification: An Interpopulation Comparison, Maura K. Niemisto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic carbon released into the atmosphere is driving rapid, concurrent increases in temperature and acidity across the world’s oceans, most prominently in northern latitudes. The geographic range of the iconic American lobster (Homarus americanus) spans a steep thermal gradient and one of the most rapidly warming oceanic environments. Understanding the interactive effects of ocean warming and acidification on this species’ most vulnerable early life stages is important to predict its response to climate change on a stage-specific and population level. This study compares the responses of lobster larvae from two sub-populations spanning New England’s north-south temperature gradient (southern …


Development Of Computational Techniques For Identification Of Regulatory Dna Motif, Cankun Wang Jan 2019

Development Of Computational Techniques For Identification Of Regulatory Dna Motif, Cankun Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifying precise transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) or regulatory DNA motif (motif) plays a fundamental role in researching transcriptional regulatory mechanism in cells and helping construct regulatory networks for biological investigation. Chromatin immunoprecipitation combined with sequencing (ChIP-seq) and lambda exonuclease digestion followed by high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-exo) enables researchers to identify TFBS on a genome-scale with improved resolution. Several algorithms have been developed to perform motif identification, employing widely different methods and often giving divergent results. In addition, these existing methods still suffer from prediction accuracy. Thesis focuses on the development of improved regulatory DNA motif identification techniques. We designed an …