Karina Zile
Mathematician by training I am interested in answering biological questions using quantitative approaches.
I am a PhD student based in UCL Computer Sciencen and funded by BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium (LIDo).
My project is a quest for new genes. A growing body of evidence suggests that taxonomically restricted genes may play key roles in phenotypes. While a lot of research is focused on genes with homologs across many organisms, little is known about the evolution of taxonomically restricted genes. To address this, my project aims at:
- developing algorithms for inferring histories of functional genomic elements
- discovering how taxonomically restricted genes come into existence
- examining their evolutionary histories
- producing a more useful definition of taxonomically restricted genes
Research Interests
- Taxonomically restricted genes
- Protein, domain and exon-intron architecture evolution
- Information theory
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