Joachim Messing


Rutgers University - Busch Campus
Waksman Institute - Auditorium
Piscataway, New Jersey
Friday, January 20, 1995
4:00PM

Title of Discussion

MECHANISMS THAT LEAD TO GENETIC DIVERSITY

Abstract:


DNA sequence information provides an opportunity to deconstruct changes that have occurred over time. Therefore, it would be interesting to investigate the frequency, position, and sequence context of transposition events. Within genes, it would be interesting to investigate the impact of transposition events on mRNA splicing and protein structure. First, we will review changes in genetic information when and how they occur. Then, we will focus on different recombination mechanisms and which approaches are used to determine the chimerism of genetic information. We will select non-linear junctions of DNA sequences to identify sequence changes which can occur during reproduction and development of many organisms. Out of these, changes that have been produced by the integration and excision of transposable elements are frequently referred to as transposable element footprints. From genomes of comparable complexity, plant genomes are expected to have accumulated a higher rate of footprints than mammalian genomes because of the exclusion of somatic changes from the germline of animals.

Reception will follow lecture.


Index
Document last modified on December 12, 1994