August 31, 2007 BiRG Meeting

Agenda

• Suggested topics for upcoming presentations
• Schedule for future presentations
• Grants available for BiRG
• BiRG Informatician position available
• BLAST presentation by Theresa Butler
• Discussion of potential research projects

Suggested Topics for Upcoming Presentations
Dr. Ramachandran began the meeting by suggesting the following topics for future
presentations:

• Perl programming basics (to be presented by Shawn Hanes on September 28th)
• Censor (a program for identification and elimination of repetitive elements
  from DNA sequences)
• Human Genome Project (to be presented by John Lannon on September 21st)
• DNA basics (to be presented by Leah Balmer on September 14th)
• NCBI introduction (National Center for Biotechnology Information)
• BioInformatics primer
• IUS library resources (to be presented by Theresa Butler on September 7th)
• IUS computing resources

Schedule for Upcoming Presentations

September 2007

• 09/07 - IUS library resources, presented by Theresa Butler
• 09/14 - DNA basics, presented by Leah Balmer
• 09/21 - Human Genome Project, presented by John Lannon
• 09/28 - Perl programming basics, presented by Shawn Hanes

October 2007

• 10/05 - Open (conference at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN)
• 10/12 - Open
• 10/19 - Open
• 10/26 - Open

November 2007

• 11/02 - Open
• 11/09 - Open
• 11/16 - Open
• 11/23 - Open
• 11/30 - Open

December 2007

• 12/07 - Open

Grants Available for BiRG

• Large grants: 4 available (up to $1500 per semester) for Spring 2008. Priority given to those with defined BiRG positions
• Small grants: several available (up to $500 plus travel expenses)

BiRG Informatician Position filled by John Lannon

BLAST Presentation by Theresa Butler

Theresa and Dr. Ramachandran introduced the group to NCBI's Basic Local Assignment and Search Tool (BLAST). BLAST is a program accessible for free at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/ that allows one to search all of the available genetic sequence databases. One can start with a protein or DNA sequence and find similar results based on several sophisticaed heuristic algorithms. This presentation served as an introduction to just one of the freely available genetic information tools that will prove invaluable to BiRG members in the future.

Discussion of potential research projects

Dr. Ramachandran discussed potential research project ideas with members. Among the discussed topics was molecular evolution and, in particular, the evolution of specific retroviruses.