Biography:

I am currently at the final stages of the University of Houston Biology Ph.D. program. My research, under the direction of Professor Dan Graur, focuses on evolutionary analysis of overlapping genes. My dissertation consists of three:

(1) the factors that influence the abundance of overlapping genes

(2) estimating selection strength in overlapping genes

(3) the identification of new, previously unannotated, overlapping genes.

My work has been published in several journals including Molecular Biology and Evolution, PLoS One, and Biology Direct. In addition, I was invited to present my research at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in 2008 and in 2009. On the long-term, I aim to use the rapidly accumulating genomic data to improve our understanding of evolutionary processes and particularly our knowledge about infectious diseases.

Abstract:

Discovery of a Novel Overlapping Gene in the Genome of the IAP Virus

Even a century after the term "gene" was coined by Wilhelm Johannsen, there is no consensus regarding its definition. Nevertheless, immense efforts in biological research are aimed at identifying genes and determining their biological function. Information in protein-coding genes is encoded in nucleotide triplets that are translated into amino-acids, the building blocks of proteins. A region of DNA can therefore be read in three reading-frames (and three more on the complementary strand) to potentially encode different proteins. When two proteins are encoded by a single DNA region, they are said to be overlapping. Overlapping genes are ubiquitous in all organisms, particularly in viruses. However, existing genome annotation tools often fail to detect overlapping genes. We developed a new method that employs evolutionary principles to identify overlapping genes based on the sequence-signature of natural selection. Using this method, we discovered a novel overlapping gene in the genomes of the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) and three additional related viruses. IAPV infects bees and was found to be associated with colony collapse disorder (CCD), a syndrome characterized by the mass disappearance of honeybees. Given the monetary value of bee pollination (estimated in the billions of dollars), CCD is a very serious agricultural and economic problem. The discovery of the new gene may improve our understanding of this virus and its harmful consequences for honeybees. We foresee that our method will lead to the identification of many more genes.