My projects

Global and Local Sequence Alignment

Oftentimes biologists will compare sequences of DNA or RNA to determine how similar they are. This is especially useful in evolutionary biology. All species have common ancestors and these ancestors can be identified through the comparison of DNA sequences. In addition, it is possible to identify regions of DNA that have been conserved (not changed) from species to species which allows biologists to ask questions like what is the purpose of this section of DNA? is it an exon (protein-coding region) or is it a regulatory region? They can also understand what mutations have occurred between two different DNA strands through the comparison of them.