Monica  Yalamanchili,   '09 92
   Major: Biology
   Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI

Sponsor(s): Ken Saville
Support:  

Abstract: 
A genome is the total amount of DNA information contained within a cell. The relatively recent advent of genome sequencing technology has opened up new opportunities to understand how genomes are organized and how this organization evolves. To bring the field of genomics to undergraduates a partnership called the Genomics Education Partnership, centered at Washington University in St. Louis, has been formed by Dr. Sarah Elgin of Washington University. The goal of this partnership is to develop a 'distributed research project' wherein undergraduates from around the country collaborate in solving genomics-based research problems. The overall project is to compare the total sequence of a specialized chromosome from several species of Drosophila. The project is divided into two parts: ‘Finishing’ and ‘Annotation’. In the Finishing component, students analyze the quality of sequence data and recommend areas of the DNA sequence that require new data to be complete. Once the sequence is complete, students annotate the position of genes and other genetic features in the genome. In collaboration with this partnership, we, as a class worked on ‘finishing’ approximately 250,000 base pairs of DNA sequence derived from the Hawaiian fruit fly: Drosophila grimshawi, and annotated several 40,000 base pair regions of sequences from Drosophila erecta and Drosophila mojavensis. A summary of results of our research as a class will be presented.

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