DEVELOPING APPROACHES THAT LEVERAGE NEXT GENERATION SEQUENCING TO STUDY BROAD BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
Abstract
The advent of Next Generation Sequencing has been an extremely powerful tool in transforming the way we answer biological questions today. With the price per base pair continuously decreasing, and throughput, sequencing speed and quality of sequence reads increasing, NGS has allowed scientists to develop novel biological applications that have led to significant findings. During my dissertation, I leveraged several non-model organisms across various projects to develop new approaches of NGS to study a broad range of biological questions, including (1) understanding the genetic processes underlying transgenerational plasticity in Daphnia, (2) using Hi-C sequencing to study vertebrate genome structure and how chromatin and transcription factors interact to regulate snake venom, and (3) resurrecting archived, very low-quality samples to understand patterns of transmission in parasites. Collectively, this worked serves as a demonstration of how NGS can be utilized across multiple systems to answer broad biological questions.