Aaron Hardin
Graduate Student
As we approach a time when human genome sequencing will be routine and widely available, we remain surprisingly ignorant about the functional consequences of sequence variation, particularly in non-coding DNA where the overwhelming majority of polymorphisms are found. The model of early anterior-posterior patterning in Drosophila melanogaster provides thousands of functional non-coding sequences in which I can assay the impact of naturally occurring sequence variations. The lessons learned in Drosophila will be of immediate use in both identifying and understanding human non-coding sequence variants linked to disease and other clinically relevant phenotypes.
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