Seeing the forest for the trees

Training Lumberjacks

Learning objectives

• Understand how to represent data and determine relatedness.

{Recognizing trees in different forms}

Learn how to construct a relationship tree and interpreted the data.

{Personality profiler bioinformatic exercise}

Family Trees

Other types of trees.

Different representations of the same data

Goal: Develop a web application to introduce non-majors or intro-level

majors to tree building and data representation

Developing a peptide profile

• Utilize a series of “personality” questions to generate a peptide sequence reflecting a student’s perspective on a variety of topics– Are you a good singer?

• Yes –Add ELVIS to string of letters representing a growing peptide sequence

• No – Add RITNEY to string of letters representing a growing peptide sequence

• In the shower – Add W to string of letters representing a growing peptide sequence

How similar are you and Elvis?

YOU

Develop tutorial explaining tree construction

• Each individual in database is represented by a peptide sequence– ELVIS = ELVISISALIVEANDWELL

• Provide subsequent tutorial explaining how the tree was drawn using character differences in strings

• Could add subsequent “canned” exercise describing relationships among diverse biological organisms

How To Lie With Trees

Subject 3