Asher Haug-Baltzell Conference Summary

Asher Haug-Baltzell Conference Summary

Asher Haug-Baltzell

Ph.D. Student
Genetics GIDP

Conference Summary
Annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference
San Diego, CA
January 9-13, 2015

Thanks to the generous support of the Herbert E. Carter Travel Award, I was able to attend the 24th annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG XXIV) in San Diego, CA. PAG is a large conference, with over 3000 attendees and over 130 industry exhibitors, and is generally considered the premier agriculturally-focused genomics conference. With such a large attendance, the workshop is divided into “workshops”, or smaller sessions of 5-7 talks covering a specific topic. I had the fortunate opportunity to present talks in two different workshops, as well as a poster during the poster session.

 For the “Genome management and analysis with CoGe” workshop (and also the topic of my poster), I presented two new visualization tools released by our group this year - SynMap2 (https://genomevolution.org/coge/SynMap.pl) and SynMap3D (https://genomevolution.org/r/synmap3dbeta) – and some of my visions for the future of genomic data visualization. SynMap2 is an updated version of our original genome synteny browser (SynMap) which boasts improved performance, more natural user interactions, and provides the backbone for more advanced developments that will be coming in the next year. SynMap3D is a new tool that visualizes conserved elements between three genomes, and has unique features including experimental information overlay and a new “virtual reality mode”, which allows users to view their visualizations through newly available VR headsets.

During the “Polyploidy” session, I presented the inspiration, data, and key findings from my recent publication “A polyploidy origin of Dopamine Receptors in the vertebrates” (goo.gl/XypGjS). This was a particularly exciting talk (and workshop in general), as it broke away from the traditionally exclusively plant-centric discussion of polyploidy and featured polyploidy across large segments of the tree of life. During my presentation I had the opportunity to cover most of the evidence that drove the discovery that the superfamily of dopamine receptors in vertebrate species underwent a large, retained expansion through two rounds of whole genome duplication short after the divergence from invertebrates.

I feel that the presentations I was able to give thanks to the support of the Herbert E. Carter Travel Award truly highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the Lyons’ lab. Our lab represents the intersection between computer science and genetic discovery, and while we are mostly known for the suite of genome management and comparative analysis tools we develop and operate (www.genomevolution.org), we drive the design our tools around real-world experimental questions. Our main interests cover a diverse range of topics, from “how has genome structure evolved and how that structure might affect functions?” to “how can we effectively store, access, and compare the tens to hundreds of thousands of genomes and all their associated experimental datasets in a way that allows researchers to make meaningful discoveries?”. By leveraging computational knowledge and resources, we strive to both answer such questions and enable other researchers to make additional discoveries.