Dr. Louis-Marie Bobay (Biology) received a continuation of funding from the University of Texas at Austin for the project “Dimensions: Ordering the microbial world into natural genetic, ecological, and functional units.”
The project goal is to classify prokaryotes into biological species based on gene flow and analyze the dynamics of gene flow within and between prokaryotic species.
Researchers will conduct three main analyses:
Year 1: Re-classify all prokaryotic genomes into biological species based on the detection of gene flow with the ConSpeciFix program developed and improved by Dr. Bobay.
Year 2: Re-classify all prokaryotic genomes into species based on commonly used methods and compare the different classification schemes to the biological species.
Year 3: Evaluate the dynamics of gene flow within and between species.
