Department of Biology

Renn Lab

Student Project Ideas

(check back often as new ideas will be added)

These pages include scientific ideas that supplement my own research interests. I provide a short summary and a few references but students are encouraged to propose independent ideas.

  1. Genetic Basis for Maternal Behavior in A. burtoni * (several projects)
  2. Natural vs. Environmental Sex-Role Reversal among Julidochromis species * (several projects)
  3. Identification of Rapidly Evolving Cichlid Genes with hCGH *
  4. Proof of Principle for hCGH using Drosophila melanogaster (related to project 3)
  5. Sex Determination in African Cichlids
  6. Data Imputation with cDNA Microarray Data
  7. Assortitive Mating by Cichlid Populations
  8. Blue fish / Yellow fish
  9. Bioinformatics (several projects available)
  10. Genomic Resources for Cichlids - complete 2006 Robby Kunkle

(* indicates ongoing projects that are a main focus in our research)

 

Student Project Idea 9

Bioinformatics for Cichlids

Funding has been approved for full genome sequence of the African Cichlid fish species, Tilapia, as well as shallow genome sequence (2X) for three additional cichlid species, one from each of the African Great Lakes. We also have expressed sequence tags (EST's) for 12,000 genes in Astatotilapia burtoni and from Okada's lab we have access to EST's for ~ 10,000 genes from each of three species from Lake Victoria. Meanwhile Kocher/Streelman have made available partial genome sequence (0.1X coverage) from 5 different species from Lake Malawi. There are endless possibilities for bioinformatic comparison among these different data sets. While some of these projects would be purely bioinformatic and rely only on computer analysis, some projects could lead to annotation used for gene expression analysis, or wet-lab validation of findings. Mathematically/Computationaly inclined students would be encouraged to collaborate with Jim Fix in Reed's Mathematics department in order to build new bioinformatic tools in addition to using tried and true analyses.

 

References (for ideas)