Liminal spaces in genomic evolution
Speaker: Urminder Singh is a computer scientist and bioinformatician. His educational background encompasses a bachelor’s degree in physics and masters in computer science. He obtained an M. Tech degree from SCIS in 2015 working with Dr. Chari on the problem of predicting origin of replication sequences.
Afterwards, he spent around 6 months as a project assistant in Dr. Jain lab, during which he developed PLNCPRO, which is a machine learning method for lncRNA prediction. He moved to Iowa State University in 2016 to pursue a PhD in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
After graduating with highest honors in 2021, he accepted a position in Illumina’s oncology research and development team and moved to San Diego, California. He is currently employed as Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at Illumina.
His talk, “Liminal spaces in genomic evolution”, will be about his PhD work where he developed novel methods and tools for identification and functional characterization of species-specific orphan genes.
Abstract : Functional innovation helps an organism adapt and survive under changing environments. In transcription, the term "functional" has been widely used to describe transcripts across the evolutionary spectrum -- from well-conserved genes to sparsely expressed RNAs.
A different view of genomic evolution posits pervasive transcription provides an opportunity for evolutionary innovation. Many of the sparsely transcribed RNAs are in a "liminal" state. Many of these wane during evolution; some are selected and optimized under persistent or intermittent environmental challenges.
The species-specific orphan genes fall under this category. Many of these have been known to be involved in essential biological functions. Others seem lowly and sparsely expressed under specific conditions, lying virtually in "liminal spaces" and could potentially transition to facilitate evolutionary novelty.
