Thesis Defense Announcement To: the George Mason Community *Shoaleh Dehghan Master of Science in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology * Date: Wednesday December 8, 2010 Time: 11:00 A.M. Place: Conference Room, #312G Occoquan Building Prince William campus <http://www.gmu.edu/resources/visitors/findex.html> <http://www.gmu.edu/resources/visitors/findex.html> Thesis Chair: Dr. Donald Seto, BCB Dept. *Title : *"***Computational Analysis of Pathogen Evolution Using Human Adenovirus Type 4 Genomes*"** Comparative genomic and computational analyses of four genomes of human adenovirus type 4 (HAdV-E4), spanning fifty years, document the molecular evolution of this pathogen at the nucleotide level by revealing a recent recombination with HAdV-B within the DNA replication signals in the Inverted Terminal Repeat of two recently circulating isolates. This, along with an earlier recombination found within the prototype genome that includes the hexon gene of HAdV-B16, apparently allows the current, most virulent isolates to be established in the population. ###