Istrail Lab

Genome Assembly and Comparisons, Haplotype Assembly, and Transcriptome Assembly

Research Summary

Transcriptome of American Oysters, Crassostrea virginica, in Response to Bacterial Challenge: Insights into Potential Mechanisms of Disease Resistance

The American oyster Crassostrea virginica, an ecologically and economically important estuarine organism, can suffer high mortalities in areas in the Northeast United States due to Roseovarius Oyster Disease (ROD), caused by the gram-negative bacterial pathogen Roseovarius crassostreae. The goals of this research were to provide insights into:

A quantitative reference transcriptome for Nematostella vectensis earlyembryonic development: a pipeline for de novo assembly in emergingmodel systems

The de novo assembly of transcriptomes from short shotgun sequencesraises challenges due to random and non-random sequencing biases andinherent transcript complexity. We sought to define a pipeline for denovo transcriptome assembly to aid researchers working withemerging model systems where well annotated genome assemblies are notavailable as a reference.

HapCompass: A Fast Cycle Basis Algorithm forAccurate Haplotype Assembly of Sequence Data

Genome assembly methods produce haplotype phase ambiguous assemblies due to limita-tions in current sequencing technologies. Determining the haplotype phase of an individualis computationally challenging and experimentally expensive. However, haplotype phaseinformation is crucial in many bioinformatics workflows such as genetic association studiesand genomic imputation.

The Transcriptome of the Sea Urchin Embryo

The sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus is a model organism for study of the genomic control circuitry underlying embryonic development. We examined the complete repertoire of genes expressed in the S. purpuratus embryo, up to late gastrula stage, by means of high-resolution custom tiling arrays covering the whole genome.

Relevant Papers