Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Winona State University
My name is Yingxu Liu and I am originally from China. I studied Computer Science in Hebei University of Technology in China for three years, then becoming an exchange student at Winona State University. I am now still studying Computer Science in WSU. I am senior in 2010 fall semester. My email is yliu09@winona.edu.
During the summer of 2010, I participated in Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates DREU program. I worked with Dr. Jessica at University of North Carolina at Charlotte for Bioinformatics and Genomics research.
I am working to identify and describe genes that are unique to a class of
plants called legumes. Legumes are unique among other plants in that they
form a symbiotic relationship with soil microbes through the formation of
nitrogen-fixing nodules. In addition, legumes also produce a number of
important compounds called phytochemicals such as isoflavonoids that are
important to human health and nutrition.
The legumes encompass nearly 20,000
species and 700 genera. Of these, there are 3 fully sequenced species, Lotus
japonicus, Medicago truncatula and Glycine max. In addition there are
extensive expressed sequence resources across a variety of species. Building
upon a previous analysis from 2004 using a small set of ESTs, I am
developing a new pipeline that will allow us to identify genes that are
unique to all legumes with respect to all other known sequences. In
addition, by using a database structure I can query for genes that are
taxon-specific or clade-specific allowing for a unique view of legume
specific genes.