In the realm of computational biology, sometimes learning what isn\u2019t possible is just as important as learning what is. That has been the case with recent research conducted by Professor Yi-Chieh (Jessica) Wu and her colleagues, who have presented an algorithm for assessing feasibility of gene families with multiple loci and samples.<\/p>\n
Traditional methods of phylogenetic tree mapping have investigated gene families using methods that are restricted to using data from an individual sample. \u201cIf you allow for multiple individuals, you get data that you can\u2019t explain,\u201d Wu says. \u201cThat means that there is some explanation, but it can\u2019t be explained by this model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wu\u2019s publication bridges these models by considering a joint model and allowing for multiple loci\u00a0and\u00a0multiple samples per species. \u201cReconciliation Feasibility in the Presence of Gene Duplication, Loss, and Coalescence with Multiple Individuals per Species,\u201d recently accepted to BMC Bioinformatics<\/em>, was coauthored by Wu, Jennifer Rogers \u201916, Andrew Fishberg \u201916 and Nora Youngs (Colby College).<\/p>\n \u201cNow we know that the current models are insufficient,\u201d says Wu. \u201cSo we know that we have to develop new models or extend current models. It\u2019s revealing a problem that before we could have intuited but couldn\u2019t see. Now we have algorithms that can reconstruct evolutionary history or identify errors in the data that make your model insufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n This work is an extension of Wu\u2019s postdoctoral work, which is already being used in the field. \u201cMy work is driven by the idea that biologists might have specific questions to ask, and I want to help them answer them.\u00a0As we sequence more genomes, data sets will increasingly call for the types of methods we present in this paper.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the realm of computational biology, sometimes learning what isn\u2019t possible is just as important as learning what is. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":5751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,14,26,30],"class_list":["post-5750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-computer-science","category-faculty","category-research","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}