Sulaimani (KRG), Iraq - June 8, 2016 - Dr. Atheer Matroud, chair of the Department of Information Technology at AUIS, will visit Professor Stoye Research Group at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, as part of a three month research grant beginning this June. During this time, he will work on a research project that focuses on building phylogenetic trees* for closely related species using DNA sequences that contain repetitive elements. This project is a continuing work on the analysis of tandem repeats. His research visit is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Dr. Matroud worked on a similar study several years ago with a group of researchers at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution and at Massey University where they observed a complex repetitive structure in the ribosomal DNA of Colocasia esculenta (tropical plant also known as taro). The nested tandem repeat can be used as a phylogenetic marker for studying populations genetics. A preliminary analysis suggests that changes in the ancestor tandem repeats (NTR) in taro have been occurring on a 1000 year time scale, so a greater understanding of this NTR offers the potential to date the early agriculture of this ancient staple food crop. Dr. Matroud's thesis on nested tandem repeat computation and analysis at Massey University can be found here. He also co-authored a paper on detecting the repeat structure in DNA sequences with a software tool, NTRFinder.
“I am aiming to publish a software tool that can be helpful to analyse DNA sequences.” said Dr Matroud about his plans after completing the fellowship. “This software may be used to study population genetics in the Kurdistan region by using repeated elements as markers.”
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*A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the inferred evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities—their phylogeny—based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. (Wikipedia)