Angisperm ancestral genome reconstruction

Collaboration of:

• Chunfang Zheng
• David Sankoff
• Haibao Tang
• Eric Lyons

Overview

Zheng and Sankoff have developed and continue to refine a mathematical framework for reconstructing ancestral genome states of various angiosperm lineages using syntenic blocks identified by SynMap, an interactive tool for the pairwise comparison of whole genomes development by Tang and Lyons. This problem is complicated by whole genome duplications, a common occurrence in angiosperm lineages, followed by fractionation of duplicated gene content.

Of particular interest are the ancestral genomes of:

1. Eudicots which have undergone a paleohexaploidy
   1. OMG! Orthologs in Multiple Genomes – Competing Graph-Theoretical Formulations]
   2. Ancient angiosperm hexaploidy meets ancestral eudicot gene order
2. Monocots
   1. Not possible to solve with the current taxonomic sampling of monocot genomes (currently, only grass genomes are available and of sufficient quality)
   2. Anticipated high-quality genomes that may help:
      1. Banana: http://www.musagenomics.org/
      2. Duckweed: http://lemna.rutgers.edu/
3. Angiosperms
   1. Of current research interest by this team