CBCB Seminar Series

For the summer 2009 Works-in-Progress series (now complete), see here.

Most CBCB seminars are held from 2 p.m. until 3:15 p.m. on Thursdays in Room 3118 at Biomolecular Sciences Building #296
Some external seminars are listed here. These, and some other exceptions, will have a different time and/or place.
Please see directions below.

2:00 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009

Title: TBA.

By: Mary Schueler,  National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health

Venue: Biomolecular Science Building Room 3118

2:00 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009

Title: Computational Techniques for Inferring Phylogenetic Relationships Using Multiple Loci.

By: Luay Nakhleh, Department of Computer Science, Rice University

Venue: Biomolecular Science Building Room 3118

Abstact: Accurate inference of phylogenetic relationships of species, and understanding their relationships with gene trees are two central themes in molecular and evolutionary biology. Traditionally, a species tree is inferred by (1) sequencing a genomic region of interest from the group of species under study, (2) reconstructing its evolutionary history, and (3) declaring it to be the estimate of the species tree. However, recent analyses of increasingly available multi-locus data from various groups of organisms have demonstrated that different genomic regions may have evolutionary histories (called “gene trees”) that may disagree with each other, as well as with that of the species. This observation has called into question the suitability of the traditional approach to species tree inference. Further, when some, or all, of these disagreements are caused by reticulate evolutionary events, such as hybridization, then the phylogenetic relationship of the species is more appropriately modeled by a phylogenetic network than a tree. As a result, a new, post-genomic paradigm has emerged, in which multiple genomic regions are analyzed simultaneously, and their evolutionary histories are reconciled in order to infer the evolutionary history of the species, which may not necessarily be treelike.

In this talk, I will describe our recent work on developing mathematical criteria and algorithmic techniques for analyzing incongruence among gene trees, and inferring phylogenetic relationships among species despite such incongruence. This includes work on lineage sorting, reticulate evolution, as well as simultaneous treatment of both.

Speaker BIO: Luay Nakhleh is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. He received the B.Sc. degree from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1996, the Master’s degree from Texas A&M University in 1998, and the PhD degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004all three degrees in Computer Science. His research interests fall in the general areas of computational biology and bioinformatics; in particular, he works on computational phylogenomics and its connection with other fields in biology. Luay has published over 50 manuscripts on his work, supervised the dissertations of two recent PhD graduates, and currently supervises the dissertations of 6 PhD students. Luay has received several awards, including the Texas Excellent Teaching Award from UT Austin in 2001, the Outstanding Dissertation Award from UT Austin in 2005, the Roy E. Campbell Faculty Development Award from Rice University in 2006, the DOE Early Career Award in 2006, the NSF CAREER Award in 2009, and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 2009.

11:00 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

Title: Finding the trees in Darwin's forest.
By: Robert K. Bradley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Venue: Biomolecular Science Building Room 3118
Abstact: TBA

Scheduled Events

  • Fall, 2009: Mei-Ling Ting Lee, Maryland School of Public Health
  • Feb. 11, 2010: Sean Eddy, HHMI Janelia Farm
  • March 25, 2010: Olga Troyanskaya, Princeton, "From genomics data integration to using functional relationship networks to understand disease at the molecular level"

Past Events


Other Events


Directions

More detailed transportation options to CBCB can be found here.

From the Capital Beltway to Parking Lot:
  • take Capital Beltway (I-495) Exit 25 and turn onto Baltimore Avenue (US Route 1) South
  • go two miles south on Baltimore Ave and enter the main gate at Campus Drive
  • take the right lane into campus and make first right turn onto Paint Branch Drive
  • stop at the first stop sign then pass Stadium Drive on the left
  • stop at the second stop sign then pass Parking Lot XX2 on the right
  • look for the Paint Branch Drive Visitor Lot on the left
  • turn left onto Technology Drive and park in the Paint Branch Drive Visitor Lot


From Parking Lot to CBCB:
  • the back of the Biomolecular Sciences Building #296 faces this parking lot
  • walk around to the front of the building and using the keypad near the front door
  • dial the number of one of the CBCB staff members in order to gain entrance to the building
  • CBCB is located on the third floor of the Biomolecular Sciences Building #296