Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.
Monireh Safari, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Lila Kari
This study uncovers 15 bacterium–archaeon pairs that, despite maximal taxonomic divergence, share highly similar k-mer–based genomic signatures. Using a computational pipeline that utilizes a 6-mers-based analysis and 100 kbp-length genome proxies, we accurately classified 693 extremophile genomes by taxonomy and by environment-type.
Our findings of the aforementioned bacterium–archaeon pairs with similar genomic signatures were validated through multiple approaches, including 3-mer frequency analysis, phenotypic similarity, and geographic co-occurrence. The results suggest that shared extreme environmental conditions can drive genome-wide convergence across taxonomically divergent microbial species.