There will be a Bioinformatics colloquium Tuesday 11/10/09 in Bull Run Hall Rm. 130 at 4:30 pm.

The speaker James Diggans Ph.D. of the Mitre Corporation is one of our former students. Here is his title and abstract.

DOTS: DNA Order Tracking System

The ability to construct gene- and genome-length DNA fragments from scratch is a rapidly developing technology in the field of synthetic biology. Existing efforts to screen DNA synthesis orders rely solely upon direct alignment of ordered sequence to threat agents. Our approach assumes intent to obfuscate on the part of the ordering entity. We hypothesize that any truly valuable screening method will have to collate and analyze orders over time to determine relationships between orders and overall correspondence to threat agent sequence. A system capable of monitoring incoming DNA synthesis requests and identifying hazardous DNA sequences, ordered whole or in parts and spanning multiple vendor companies, time frames and points of origin, can be built around existing techniques utilized for sequence alignment and shotgun genome assembly.

ALSO:

We have spaces open for ESP and MMB grad students to present their research at the Student Research Day this year. As a reminder, it's 3pm on December 8th, Room 130 in BRH.