Chaitanya Aluru will present his General Exam Presentation today Monday May 21, 2018 at 11:00 am in CS302 Committee: Mona Singh (Adviser) Olga Troyanskaya Ben Raphael Title: Reconciliation Methods for Transcription Factor Evolution Abstract: Regulatory networks are thought to underlie the biological differences between organisms. However, the evolutionary mechanisms by which these networks evolve is still an active area of research. Proteins called transcription factors (TFs) form a central component of regulatory networks and are thought to evolve through repeated duplications and losses of component domains. The current framework for inferring ancestral evolutionary events in proteins models single domain duplications, losses and transfers. However, recent work has shown that rapid evolution of some transcription factors was driven by tandem domain duplications rather than individual duplications, making inference by current models incorrect. In this talk, I will discuss the unique challenges that arise in inferring ancestral evolutionary events in TFs, using zinc finger proteins as a model of rapid evolutionary expansion. I then propose extensions to the model to appropriately account for the greater set of evolutionary events that affect TFs. Barbara A. Mooring Interim Graduate Coordinator Computer Science Department Princeton University