Date of Award

January 2020

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Medical Doctor (MD)

Department

Medicine

First Advisor

Mark Gerstein

Abstract

Heritable traits tend to rise or fall in prevalence over time in accordance with their effect on survival and reproduction; this is the law of natural selection, the driving force behind speciation. Natural selection is both a consequence and (in cancer) a cause of disease. The new abundance of sequencing data has spurred the development of computational techniques to infer the strength of selection across a genome. One technique, dN/dS, compares mutation rates at mutation-tolerant synonymous sites with those at nonsynonymous sites to infer selection. This dissertation tests, extends, and complements dN/dS for inferring selection from sequencing data. First, I test whether the genomic community’s understanding of mutational processes is sufficient to use synonymous mutations to set expectations for nonsynonymous mutations. Second, I extend a dN/dS-like approach to the noncoding genome, where dN/dS is otherwise undefined, using conservation data among mammals. Third, I use evolutionary theory to co-develop a new technique for inferring selection within an individual patient’s tumor. Overall, this work advances our ability to infer selection pressure, prioritize disease-related genomic elements, and ultimately identify new therapeutic targets for patients suffering from a broad range of genetically-influenced diseases.

Comments

This is an Open Access Thesis.

Open Access

This Article is Open Access

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