Oakland University Kresge Library Logo
View Item 
  •   DSpace Home
  • Undergraduate Student Scholarship
  • Honors College
  • Honors College Theses
  • View Item
  •   DSpace Home
  • Undergraduate Student Scholarship
  • Honors College
  • Honors College Theses
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

OUR at Oakland

OU Libraries

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Resources

OUR@Oakland FAQsScholarly Communication at OUResearch Data Support at OU

The Forces that Drive Low Complexity Region Evolution

Thumbnail

Author


Helander, Aaron

View/Open


Download (1.043Mb)
Honors College Thesis 2017

Abstract


Low complexity regions (LCR) are areas within genomes that are of unknown evolutionary history despite being present in all species. Among different species, they are known to be variable in length and conservation, but their variability within species (e.g., among strains) is unknown. Much research has been done on LCRs in Eukaryotes, but prokaryotes have been mostly overlooked despite the fact that they constitute the basis of every ecosystem on Earth and also include many human pathogens. Therefore, understanding the way their genomes evolve is a fundamental step to predict future adaptations, whether in response to environmental changes or to new drugs to combat diseases. This study aims to investigate the evolutionary processes of LCRs in bacteria strains by analyzing changes in their length, composition, and frequency within their genomes. We focus on strains rather than species because this level provides information on the evolution of these poorly known regions at short timescales, thus filling a gap in current knowledge that previously has only focused on longer (species-level) evolutionary timescales. Using a fully computational approach, we analyzed hundreds of proteomes across multiple Bacteria classes and determined the relative frequency, amino acid composition, and length of LCRs. Our data show that the overall composition of LCRs compared to the proteome favors higher levels of Leucine, Lysine, Alanine, and Glycine. This could suggest a potential role of selection in the evolution of these regions. In terms of LCR length, we observe that there is a relatively small variation among strains but there are numerous outliers present and further research is needed to determine why they do not follow the pattern of their species. It is expected that the variations have to do with habitats and pathogenicity

URI


http://hdl.handle.net/10323/4549

Collections


  • Honors College Theses

Metadata


Show full item record

DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
Contact Us | Send Feedback
 

 


DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
Contact Us | Send Feedback