Evolutionary Analysis of Acetylcholine Receptors Type of Ligand-Gated Ion Channels

"In this thesis I have reconstructed the evolutionary history in animals where I focused on analyzing the complete genomes of seven widely different animals. My strategy of using complete genomes is based on ""absence of evidence is evidence of absence"". Of course there are gaps in the genetic record in general, but by focusing on complete genome analysis, I hoped to minimize the effects of biases in the gaps, and provide a framework for systematic expansion of the work in the future as more complete genomes become available. Within these seven animals, after creating a comprehensive alignment of all the ART-LGIC sequences, I systematically created subclasses based on the alignment, and built a multi-scale branching structure starting with the most likely common ancestor (i.e., consensus) sequence, branching out to the ancestral subfamilies (those that are seen in all seven of the animals), and finally out to the more specialized subfamilies that appeared within particular phyla, as represented by the organisms that I analyzed. I then tracked the location-bylocation transformations by which different subclasses branched from others. By making such a comprehensive map of evolutionary pathways on the background of the amino acid sequences, my intent was to create a resource by which the relationship between sequence and function could be comprehensively explored."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Biophysics and Computational Biology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Tasneem, Asba

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jakobsson, Eric

• Biophysics, General

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3199153

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85448