Copy Number Alterations on Human Chromosomes 21 Associated with Prostate Cancer
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Date
2018
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Biological Sciences
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Abstract
The goal of my thesis project was incorporate my skills of computational biology, genomics, computer science and mathematics into something that would contribute to the knowledge of the scientific community and public in a useful way. In pairing with Dr. Philip Anderson, I was able to accomplish this goal. The research I pursued was focused on identifying potential regions of importance in prostate tumorigenesis. I analyzed publically available from The Cancer Genome Atlas using the programs R, Perl, and Bash. The code I wrote mined the data of the patients' chromosome 21 DNA, specifically copy number variants. The output of interest was the sums of patients who had a deletion or insertion at every nucleotide. I plotted this to find regions on chromosome 21 where insertion or deletion was prevalent. The region of greatest deletion was in an intron of a gene, and I used this information to hypothesize possible explanations for the regions' involvement in prostate cancer growth. My findings will hopefully allow other scientists to better understand the mechanisms of prostate cancer and inspire them to continue what I just began to uncover.