Genetic diversity in public chimpanzee data sets: truly representative of the species?

Supervisor: Irene Gallego Romero

Available for: PhD/MSc/Hons

Location: Melbourne Integrative Genomics, University of Melbourne

Project title: Genetic diversity in public chimpanzee data sets: truly representative of the species?

Background: Humans are often compared to chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, in comparative functional genomics studies. But available samples are very limited, and generally drawn from a small number of individuals. Because chimpanzees contain a lot more genetic diversity than humans, and this diversity is known to impact measurements of gene expression, an open question remains: how representative of existing chimpanzee genetic diversity is this functional genomics data? Are we making fair comparisons between the species, or limiting ourselves to studying only a small number of individuals? This project entails calling SNPs from publicly available functional genomics data generated in chimpanzees (and potentially other great apes) and integrating it with existing data sets of chimpanzee genetic diversity. This project is fully computational.

Suitable for: Students with a fondness for chimpanzees and/or an interest in population genetics.