Office: 1507 Partners II,
Centennial Campus
Email:
thorne _at_ statgen.ncsu.edu
Phone:
(919)515-1946
Fax: (919)515-7315
Other Contact Information
Reed Cartwright (Postdoctoral Fellow) |
Stéphane Aris-Brosou (now
at University of Ottawa) |
Research Project 1:
Improving models for DNA evolution by incorporating phenotype
The relationship between phenotype and survival of the genotype is central to both genetics and evolution. A wide variety of
computational biology techniques aim to predict aspects of phenotype from
DNA sequence data. We are working to improve models of molecular
evolution by incorporating these computational biology prediction
systems. Because phenotype can induce dependence among changes that
occur at different positions within a gene sequence, conventional
procedures for making evolutionary inferences are not computationally
tractable and new statistical procedures are needed.
Our recent efforts have concentrated on protein tertiary structure and RNA secondary structure, but we are very excited by the potential to quantify the impacts on evolution of diverse other aspects of phenotype. Collaborators who have made
important contributions to this research include: David Jones of
University College London, Hirohisa Kishino of
the University of Tokyo, and Nick Goldman of
the European Bioinformatics Institute.
Research Project 2: Evolution of
the rate of evolution
Evolutionary analysis of DNA and
protein sequences is typically performed by either assuming that all
evolutionary lineages change at the same rate or by avoiding any attempt to
directly consider the fact that the rate of evolution changes over time.
Factors that affect the rate of molecular evolution (e.g., mutation,
population size, generation time, selection) change over time and therefore
the rate of molecular evolution is extremely unlikely to be identical for
different evolutionary lineages. However, it is reasonable to expect an
autocorrelation of rates over time. Closely related evolutionary lineages
tend to evolve at similar rates and distantly related lineages might evolve
at more different rates. Hirohisa Kishino
(University of Tokyo), Tae-Kun Seo (University of Tokyo), and I are
developing methods for estimating dates of evolutionary events
from molecular sequence data without the restrictive and implausible
assumption that rates of evolution have been constant over time. We
also feel that these methods have great potential for illuminating patterns
of evolutionary rate variation over time.
Our rate evolution and divergence time estimation software is crude, free, and available here.
Many of my reprints can be found here.
For other information, please see my C.V.
A message from my baby
girl for visitors to this page.
Some Other Links: N.C.S.U. Statistical Genetics and Bioinformatics N.C.S.U. Genetics N.C.S.U. Statistics www.theonion.com