Ken Paigen
Functional Clustering in the Mammalian Genome
The manner in which the location and arrangement of genes along chromosomes relates to their biological functions and to other features of genome organization remains a largely open question. Acquiring experimental tools for mapping these relationships and determining the extent to which functionally related genes are in physical proximity are matters of considerable importance for efforts to identify genetic factors important in human health and disease, as well as for enhancing our understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying genome organization. We are developing tools to address these problems.
An important aspect of this project is to integrate information coming from other Center projects. We are working with Drs. Ron Korstanje and Karen Svenson, for example, to evaluate whether there is genomic clustering among the quantitative trait loci determining various phenotypic traits. We believe this is especially important as evolution selects directly on phenotypes and only indirectly on their underlying molecular biology. We are also working with Dr. Petkov to evaluate the relationship between the genomic organization of recombination hotspots and chromosome features such as gene density, repeat elements, domains of linkage disequilibrium, GC content and purine/pyrimidine strand bias.
