Technical Summary
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the management and analysis of biological data, such as whole genome sequences, with computer programs written to handle the massive quantities now available. Bioinformatics is particularly useful for our project as it allows comparison of genome sequences for different species such as chimpanzees, macaques, mice and humans. We are using bioinformatics to search for genes that we suspect are involved in skull shape to look for evidence of their involvement in the evolution of the primate head.
The availability of human, chimp, macaque and mouse genomes enables us to compare orthologous genes between species. Orthologous genes are genes in different species that are similar in sequence and function and originated from a common ancestor. Similar to comparing changes in shape between species, bioinformatics allows us to determine changes in the genetic structure underlying the shape changes.