Project:

Measuring quality control of sequences of the mitochondrial barcode gene Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COX1) in highly diverse g

Students:

James Tu, Rochelle Avezki

Institution:

St. John's University, Queens

Mentors:

Juan C Santos

Abstract:

Currently, around 9 million species of animals, plants, and other living organisms have been barcoded in the International Barcode of Life (iBOL). Public DNA databases are extremely useful for scientists, as they provide an easily accessible source of sequences to work with. However, as the need for large GenBank databases continues to grow, the accuracy and reliability of the public GenBank has declined. In order to address this problem, our team plans to create a framework of quality control of the COX1 gene in the GenBank database, using poison frogs as an example. After extracting the sequences and their metadata from GenBank, we will compare the sequences to correctly labelled reference sequences. Using a time series analysis, our team will also investigate how misidentification has affected the accuracy of GenBank through the years. The ultimate goal of our project is to help public DNA databases become a more reliable source of sequences for future researchers.

Poster:

Team samples: