Polyploid haplotype phasing
The genetic information of complex organisms like humans, animals and plants is stored in long molecules, named chromosomes. Humans and most animals inherit genetic information from their two biological parents, resulting in two slightly differing copies of each chromosome. The process of separating these two copies and reconstructing the underlying sequences is called (haplotype) phasing. In our group we study the phasing problem on polyploid organisms like plants, which contain more than two copies per chromosome. While phasing two copies (diploid phasing) is well studied, existing methods cannot be generalized to the polyploid case in a canonical way. We develop new methods for both read-based and genetic phasing with respect to the properties of polyploid organisms.