Cesare Polano
Second and Third Generation Sequencing for Genomic and Metagenomic of Phytopathogenic Prokaryotes.
Supervisor : Giuseppe Firrao (UniUD)
Next-generation sequencing technologies are in development to improve on the Sanger method, to produce data faster, cheaper, more accurately and with longer contiguous reads. The wealth of data made available by these techniques allows for more complex numerical analyses and a metagenomic approach to endophytes and pathogens population.
This project explores some practical applications of metagenomics, including but not only: the analysis of endophytes diversity in kiwifruit and their relations withPseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae; the computational isolation of phytoplasmas and other non-colturable pathogens from a diseased plant sequencing assembly; the annotation and comparative analysis of Pseudomonas strains.
The endophytes diversity is evaluated using a multivariate analysis of the 16S ribosomal RNA sampled from plant specimens (both branches and leaves) collected at various times during the year. The isolation of phytoplasmas is carried out with a BioPerl pipeline and common bioinformatic tools. The comparative analyses are based mainly on the inference of orthologs among genomes. Applications based on Third Generation Sequencing will be explored during the third year. .
Biography and contacts
Cesare Polano was born in 1982 in Venice (Italy). In 2009 he attained a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science (98/110) and in 2013 a master’s degree in Agricultural Science (98/110) at Udine University (Italy). In 2014 he started the doctoral course at the PhD school in Agricultural Science and Biotechnology at the University of Udine.
[Phone 0432558543]