DCS Summer 2012 Research Awards -- Project Description

Genome variation analysis for phenotype prediction

Faculty name: Philip M Kim
Research area: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics
Campus address: CCBR 630
Campus phone: 416-946-3419
Email address: pm.kim [at] toronto.edu
Number of students: 1-2
Skills required:
  • Familiarity with linux,
  • Strong programming skills with either of C/C++/Java/Python/Perl,
  • Scripting,
  • Basic knowledge of statistics and/or genetics (preferred but not required)

Brief project description:

This project involves sequencing, aligning, annotating and analyzing genomes of various yeast strains from across the globe. In particular, we are building a next generation sequencing (NGS) DNA sequencing and analysis pipeline. Basically, this pipeline accepts raw DNA sequence reads, de-multiplexes the data, aligns DNA of each strain to the reference genome and finally performs single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and small insertions/deletions (indels) calls. We then utilize this data to generate DNA variation profiles and hence phylogenetic analysis of several yeast strains from across the world. Our ultimate goal of is to link the genomic variation data with phenotype of an organism and hence predict the effect genetic variations.

You will learn a lot about the exciting area of computational genomics along with several tools and machine learning algorithms. Several of our previous undergraduate interns' projects resulted in publication in top-notch academic conferences and journals (http://www.kimlab.org/). You will be working with senior PhD students and Post Doctoral fellows, who would gladly teach and help you with the research problems.

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