Olsen, Howey, and Owen 1 DEVELOPMENT OF A REGIONAL GIS PORTAL WITH TRANSIT DATA Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT The New River Valley (NRV) Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) recently launched a project creating a regional GIS portal in support of transit planning initiatives. The purpose of the project is to improve connections between transit providers and other modes of transportation, and to assist on-going and future transportation planning efforts at the local and regional scale. The project was conducted in two phases. Phase I included meetings with stakeholders to assess regional needs and to discuss transit-planning processes, GIS technologies, and existing data sources. Several stakeholder agencies collaborated to share transit-related data, which was cataloged and edited for public consumption. Phase II made transit data available to the public. The MPO partnered with the NRV Planning District Commission (PDC) to host the transit data on a FTP site. Using ArcGIS Online, an interactive web map was created featuring route and stop layers for the four fixed-route providers in the region. The project provided an outlet for important discussions between regional transit stakeholders and led to increased communication and collaboration between agencies. A regional transit GIS portal was created to share transit data featuring links to the FTP site, web map and additional resources regarding the MPO project

\u3ci\u3eDrosophila\u3c/i\u3e Muller F Elements Maintain a Distinct Set of Genomic Properties Over 40 Million Years of Evolution

The Muller F element (4.2 Mb, ~80 protein-coding genes) is an unusual autosome of Drosophila melanogaster; it is mostly heterochromatic with a low recombination rate. To investigate how these properties impact the evolution of repeats and genes, we manually improved the sequence and annotated the genes on the D. erecta, D. mojavensis, and D. grimshawi F elements and euchromatic domains from the Muller D element. We find that F elements have greater transposon density (25–50%) than euchromatic reference regions (3–11%). Among the F elements, D. grimshawi has the lowest transposon density (particularly DINE-1: 2% vs. 11–27%). F element genes have larger coding spans, more coding exons, larger introns, and lower codon bias. Comparison of the Effective Number of Codons with the Codon Adaptation Index shows that, in contrast to the other species, codon bias in D. grimshawi F element genes can be attributed primarily to selection instead of mutational biases, suggesting that density and types of transposons affect the degree of local heterochromatin formation. F element genes have lower estimated DNA melting temperatures than D element genes, potentially facilitating transcription through heterochromatin. Most F element genes (~90%) have remained on that element, but the F element has smaller syntenic blocks than genome averages (3.4–3.6 vs. 8.4–8.8 genes per block), indicating greater rates of inversion despite lower rates of recombination. Overall, the F element has maintained characteristics that are distinct from other autosomes in the Drosophila lineage, illuminating the constraints imposed by a heterochromatic milieu