Achievement

A second interdisciplinary research project being conducted by the trainees involves the analysis of long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) in the human genome. These ancient "selfish genetic elements" are widely distributed in the human genome as well as in the genomes of many organisms. Using newly developed data from the human 1000 genomes project, they are analyzing the locations and frequencies of fixed and polymorphic LINE inserts to better understand how natural selection acts on LINEs. The trainees are particularly interested in studying variation between individuals. This project is in its early stages and is still on-going. A submitted manuscript is expected within the next year.