Bioinformatics Seminar
Wednesday, April 15,
2009
3:00 - 4:00
Room 457 Blocker
Martin Dickman
Plant Pathology &
Microbiology
Texas A&M University
“Fungal genomics, death and next generation sequencing”
In the past decade, a
major revolution in the biological sciences has occurred as a result of the
remarkable development and subsequent generation of information/data from
genome sequencing efforts. The availability of complete or nearly complete
genome sequences is providing the foundation for understanding how organisms
(from microbes to humans) function, develop, evolve, interact with pathogens,
and respond to environmental cues. A transformational change in the field of
biology is stemming from the development of next-generation ultra
high-throughput, relatively low-cost DNA sequencing technology. While a rapidly
moving target, most next generation sequencing technologies produce read
lengths which are much shorter than those obtained from traditional Sanger
sequencing technology. The increase in the volume of raw sequences produced
combined with the relatively short read lengths of most next generation
sequencers is resulting in a number of bioinformatics challenges with regards to
sequence processing and downstream analysis to data management/storage issues.
Texas A&M University recently acquired the Illumina
GAII next generation sequencer which is capable of producing more than 10
billion bases of DNA in just over 8 days. In this talk, I will provide an
overview of the Illumina sequencing technology and
address some of the challenges we are facing with regards to data analysis and
management. In addition, I will discuss the
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum
genome project, protein modeling efforts and how all of this interfaces with my
laboratory research interests.