Zahin Mohd Ali is born and raised in Singapore, and has pursued his passion in biology while studying at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) under Biological Sciences.
Zahin had started his interest in plants since he was in primary school, picking up gardening and hydroponics within his primary school co-curricular activities. However, his research interests goes beyond studying plant evolution as he has worked with foodborne bacteria and biocontrol agents (BCA) antagonistic to Fusarium sp. such as Trichoderma sp..
Outside the laboratory, trekking to witness the diverse flora and fauna in their natural habitats, and enjoys photographing people, architecture and landscapes.
37
Studying the evolution of ferns with large-scale comparative gene expression analyses
ZAHIN MOHD ALI1, I. JULCA1, H. CHEN2, Y. VAN DE PEER2, B. C. HO3, M. MUTWIL1
1. School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; 2. VIB-UGent Research Building, Ghent University, Belgium; 3. National Parks Board, Singapore.
Ferns are a diverse clade and have an important
role in land plant evolution, however, due to the large size and complex
genome, genomic studies have been impeded. Here we present a transcriptome
assembly, gene expression studies of plant organs and phylogenetic studies
through organ sampling of 22 ferns from 22 fern families. The transcriptome
assembly yielded high Benchmarking Universal
Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) complete single-copy scores, while maintaining
reasonable number of transcripts and low duplication scores. We will explore
phylogeny and species divergence times, as well as whole genome duplication
events between sampled species. Using gene expression data from the assemblies,
we will study organ-specific genes, phylostratigraphic analysis and
co-expression networks to analyse functional modules. Cell wall lignification
analysis will be done to investigate different lignin types and the evolution
of genes associated with lignification, as well as primary and secondary cell
wall biosynthesis. Lastly, we will
explore any symbiotic relationships that were key for land invasion of the
plant kingdom.