Department of Biology
Renn Lab
Student Project Ideas
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.
- Genetic Basis for Maternal Behavior in A. burtoni * (several projects)
- Natural vs. Environmental Sex-Role Reversal among Julidochromis species * (several projects)
- Identification of Rapidly Evolving Cichlid Genes with hCGH *
- Proof of Principle for hCGH using Drosophila melanogaster (related to project 3)
- Sex Determination in African Cichlids
- Data Imputation with cDNA Microarray Data
- Assortitive Mating by Cichlid Populations
- Blue fish / Yellow fish
- Bioinformatics (several projects available)
- Genomic Resources for Cichlids - complete 2006 Robby Kunkle
(* indicates ongoing projects that are a main focus in our research)
Student Project Idea 4
Proof of Principle for hCGH Using Drosophila species.
We propose to adapt the cancer research microarray technique of comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) for use in comparative genomic evolution in African Cichlid Fishes (see project 6). This technique has been used to identify gene duplication and gene deletion but it also has the potential to reveal genomic divergence. We can take advantage of genomic sequence available for several Drosophila species in order to characterize the affect of genomic divergence on hybridization ratio. We can use this strategy to optimize the techniques and identify appropriate normalization and analysis strategies.
