SC Conference - Activity Details

David Haussler  (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Data Challenges in Genome Analysis

Tuesday,  02:15PM - 03:00PM

Room PB253-254

Extraordinary advances in DNA sequencing technologies are producing improvements at a growth rate faster than the Moore’s law exponential., The amount of data is likely to outstrip our ability to share and process it with standard computing infrastructure soon. By comparing genomes of present-day species we can computationally reconstruct most of the genome of the common ancestor of placental mammals from 100 million years ago. We can then deduce the genetic changes on the evolutionary path from that ancient species to humans and discover how natural selection shaped us at the molecular level. About 5% of our genome has remained surprisingly unchanged across millions of years, suggesting important function. There are also short segments that have undergone unusually rapid change in humans, such as a gene linked to brain development. It will be many years before we fully understand the biology of such examples but we relish the opportunity to peek at the molecular tinkering that transformed our animal ancestors into humans.