Sandhya Thekkumpadan Puthiyaveedu: Fitch Graph Completion

Abstract

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the movement of genetic information between genomes. Focusing on a pair of present-day genes, it is of interest to determine whether or not they have been separated by HGT events in their history. Information on HGT events can be extracted from sequence information using a broad array of methods, none of which is likely to yield a complete picture. Now, since we only have partial information, we wonder if we can use what we know to guess the missing parts. In this talk, we look at:

1. The problem of characterizing the partial information that can be extended to a biologically feasible “full” picture, using Fitch graphs.
2. The problem of finding the complete picture with added confidence values in gene movements.