Abdou Rahmane Wade has just started his PhD within the INRA team in Orléans. He will study the ways to incorporate gene network information (information about which genes interact and with what effect) into mathematical models for predicting tree phenotypes (trees with the same characteristics).
So far prediction models used information contained in the gene sequence (polymorphisms) to predict directly the tree phenotype. Abdou’s project aims at including an intermediary step between polymorphisms and phenotypes that accounts for the way genes interact with each other. This, it is believed, will increase the performance of the predictions.
Abdou’s research is part of B4EST Work Package 3 and Vincent Segura and Leopoldo Sanchez will supervise his thesis.
Abdou has recently finished his training on genetics, evolution and plant breeding at SupAgro Montpellier.