Achievement

The laboratory research of BioFrontiers Faculty and IGERT co-PI Robin Dowell into the evolution of transcriptional regulation depends heavily on the interdisciplinary makeup of the lab; including students from molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, computer science, applied mathematics, computational biosciences, and biochemistry backgrounds. Recent algorithmic advances in the lab have been made by first year IQ Biology rotation students including new methodologies for identifying changes in variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) length within short read genomic sequencing (IGERT fellow Joey Azofeifa) and the construction of a new probabilistic model for identifying cryptic unstable transcription (IGERT fellow Sam Way). These algorithmic improvements allow for a more accurate accounting of how genomic change contributes to the evolutionary process of gene regulation.