The project aims to estimate variant intolerance of genes in the pig genome, and identify gene families and pathways that are tolerant and intolerant to genetic variation.
The project aims to estimate variant intolerance of genes in the pig genome, and identify gene families and pathways that are tolerant and intolerant to genetic variation.
Historical natural selection shapes the standing genetic variation that is available to natural selection and animal breeding. Variant intolerance scoring is a family of methods that estimate the evolutionary constraint on genes, and identify genes that tolerant and intolerant to variation, thus describing the potential for protein-coding variation within genes. Comprehensive catalogs of variant intolerance scores for all genes are available for humans and model organisms, but not for domestic animals.
This project will use large amounts of publicly available whole-genome sequence data to estimate residual variant intolerance scores (RVIS) of all genes in the pig genome. Gene families and pathways enriched for tolerant and intolerant genes will be described, and compared to data from other species, including cattle (from previous research in our group) and humans (from the literature). Possible extensions include estimating RVIS also at the level of protein domains.
Suitable for: Animal Science, Bioinformatics.