Seminars @ NDSSL

Title: Inference of the Evolutionary History of Multipartite Rhizobiaceae Genomes

Presenter: Dr. João Setubal
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, and
Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

Date and Time: Monday, October 23, 2006, 3:00-4:00PM

Abstract:

The Rhizobiaceae are a subgroup of alphaproteobacteria that includes the genera Agrobacterium and Rhizobium. Recently two new Rhizobium genomes have been published (R. etli and R. leguminosarum). Two new Agrobacterium genomes (A. vitis S4 and A. radiobacter K84) will soon be published. These genomes all have an unusual architecture, with one chromosome and several large secondary replicons or plasmids. Sequence comparison of these replicons shows that the chromosomes share a clear backbone, but the evolutionary history of the secondary large replicons is much less clear, and therefore presents an interesting challenge for ancestral sequence reconstruction. In this talk I will describe preliminary results on these comparisons and discuss my attempts at inferring the evolutionary events leading to the present genomic configuration. My long term goal is to provide a bridge between empirical observations of messy evolutionary events in bacterial genomes and the elegant mathematical theory for genome rearrangements that has been developed over the past several years.

Seminar Location: The seminars are held at:
    Virginia Tech, Corporate Research Center
    1880 Pratt Drive, Building XV
    Seminar Room 2018, Second Floor
    Directions: Map (PDF)

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