UC Santa Cruz

As DNA sequencing data becomes more prevalent, population genetics and evolutionary genomics are becoming increasingly more data driven, requiring the development of new tools to work with large datasets. In my doctoral research, I develop bioinformatic tools to study two important contributors to evolution: admixture and symbiosis. In my first chapter, I apply a coalescent theory model to Drosophila melanogaster populations and show evidence for African and European admixture in sub-Saharan populations of this species. In subsequent chapters, I develop a data mining approach to classify bacterial symbiont infections in publicly sequencing databases. Moreover, I investigate bacterial density within a wide range of host species and find evidence for symbiont induced host genome evolution.