Achievement

Our program uses a twinned-mentor strategy, with one mentor in the biological sciences and one in either the computational or physical sciences or engineering. One student is working with a developmental biologist working on development in zebrafish who has no background in genomics or computational biology. The other mentor works on the development of new algorithms for analyzing sequence and gene expression data but who does not have a biological background. The student has modified existing algorithms to look at 3' end processing in zebrafish. He has discovered alternative 3' end processing in a gene important for development that leads to alternative isoforms of different stability, localization and efficiency of translation. Knocking down the shorter form using morpholinos produces a fish with an abnormal phenotype in brain development. This discovery is a direct result of the interdisciplinary research fostered by our program.