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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Genome-Wide Discovery Of Missing Genes In Biological Pathways Of Prokaryotes., Yong Chen, Fenglou Mao, Guojun Li, Ying Xu Sep 2019

Genome-Wide Discovery Of Missing Genes In Biological Pathways Of Prokaryotes., Yong Chen, Fenglou Mao, Guojun Li, Ying Xu

Yong Chen

BACKGROUND: Reconstruction of biological pathways is typically done through mapping well-characterized pathways of model organisms to a target genome, through orthologous gene mapping. A limitation of such pathway-mapping approaches is that the mapped pathway models are constrained by the composition of the template pathways, e.g., some genes in a target pathway may not have corresponding genes in the template pathways, the so-called "missing gene" problem.

METHODS: We present a novel pathway-expansion method for identifying additional genes that are possibly involved in a target pathway after pathway mapping, to fill holes caused by missing genes as well as to expand the …


Saccharomyces Genome Database & Uniprot Bioinformatics Analysis, Ray A. Enke Dec 2018

Saccharomyces Genome Database & Uniprot Bioinformatics Analysis, Ray A. Enke

Ray Enke Ph.D.

This in class activity introduces basic bioinformatics analysis using the Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD) and the UniProt Database. The yeast URA3 gene is studied in this activity, however, any other yeast gene can be substituted. This activity is designed for novice instructors and students for implementation into core biology lecture or lab courses.


De-Identified Interviews For The Study: Data Challenges Of Biomedical Researchers In The Age Of Omics, Rolando Garcia-Milian, Denise Hersey, Milica Vukmirovic Jan 2018

De-Identified Interviews For The Study: Data Challenges Of Biomedical Researchers In The Age Of Omics, Rolando Garcia-Milian, Denise Hersey, Milica Vukmirovic

Rolando Garcia-Milian


Background: High-throughput technologies are rapidly generating large amounts of diverse omics data. Although this offers a great opportunity, it also poses great challenges as data analysis becomes more complex. The purpose of this study was to identify the main challenges researchers face in analyzing data, and how academic libraries can support them in this endeavor.
Methods: A multimodal needs assessment analysis, combined an online survey of 860 Yale-affiliated researchers and 15 in-depth one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using NVivo 10® software according to the thematic analysis approach.
Results: The survey response rate was …


Statistical Contributions To Bioinformatics: Design, Modeling, Structure Learning, And Integration, Jeffrey S. Morris, Veera Baladandayuthapani Dec 2016

Statistical Contributions To Bioinformatics: Design, Modeling, Structure Learning, And Integration, Jeffrey S. Morris, Veera Baladandayuthapani

Jeffrey S. Morris

The advent of high-throughput multi-platform genomics technologies providing whole-genome molecular summaries of biological samples has revolutionalized biomedical research. These technologies yield highly structured big data, whose analysis poses significant quantitative challenges. The field of Bioinformatics has emerged to deal with these challenges, and is comprised of many quantitative and biological scientists working together to eectively process these data and extract the treasure trove of information they contain. Statisticians, with their deep understanding of variability and uncertainty quantification, play a key role in these efforts. In this article, we attempt to summarize some of the key contributions of statisticians to bioinformatics, …


Making Sense Of Genomic Variation: Part 1 Snp Annotation, Rolando Garcia-Milian Mar 2016

Making Sense Of Genomic Variation: Part 1 Snp Annotation, Rolando Garcia-Milian

Rolando Garcia-Milian

The  specific combination of genetic variation in an individual defines not  only the external appearance but also susceptibility to diseases,  cancer, genetic disorders, drug response, etc. This explains the great  interest in discovering and cataloging these variations and using them  for disease association and functional studies, among others. In this  session we will review the most popular databases and tools to annotate,  analyze and visualize genetic variations. Some of the databases and  tools that will be discussed are:
-dbSNP
- Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man a comprehensive, authoritative compendium of human genes and genetic phenotypes.
- GWAS Catalog
-  EBI's …


Ordinal Probit Wavelet-Based Functional Models For Eqtl Analysis, Mark J. Meyer, Jeffrey S. Morris, Craig P. Hersh, Jarret D. Morrow, Christoph Lange, Brent A. Coull Jan 2015

Ordinal Probit Wavelet-Based Functional Models For Eqtl Analysis, Mark J. Meyer, Jeffrey S. Morris, Craig P. Hersh, Jarret D. Morrow, Christoph Lange, Brent A. Coull

Jeffrey S. Morris

Current methods for conducting expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL) analysis are limited in scope to a pairwise association testing between a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) and expression probe set in a region around a gene of interest, thus ignoring the inherent between-SNP correlation. To determine association, p-values are then typically adjusted using Plug-in False Discovery Rate. As many SNPs are interrogated in the region and multiple probe-sets taken, the current approach requires the fitting of a large number of models. We propose to remedy this by introducing a flexible function-on-scalar regression that models the genome as a functional outcome. The …


Bayesian Methods For Expression-Based Integration, Elizabeth M. Jennings, Jeffrey S. Morris, Raymond J. Carroll, Ganiraju C. Manyam, Veera Baladandayuthapani Dec 2012

Bayesian Methods For Expression-Based Integration, Elizabeth M. Jennings, Jeffrey S. Morris, Raymond J. Carroll, Ganiraju C. Manyam, Veera Baladandayuthapani

Jeffrey S. Morris

We propose methods to integrate data across several genomic platforms using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis framework that incorporates the biological relationships among the platforms to identify genes whose expression is related to clinical outcomes in cancer. This integrated approach combines information across all platforms, leading to increased statistical power in finding these predictive genes, and further provides mechanistic information about the manner in which the gene affects the outcome. We demonstrate the advantages of the shrinkage estimation used by this approach through a simulation, and finally, we apply our method to a Glioblastoma Multiforme dataset and identify several genes potentially …


Integrative Bayesian Analysis Of High-Dimensional Multi-Platform Genomics Data, Wenting Wang, Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani, Jeffrey S. Morris, Bradley M. Broom, Ganiraju C. Manyam, Kim-Anh Do Jan 2012

Integrative Bayesian Analysis Of High-Dimensional Multi-Platform Genomics Data, Wenting Wang, Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani, Jeffrey S. Morris, Bradley M. Broom, Ganiraju C. Manyam, Kim-Anh Do

Jeffrey S. Morris

Motivation: Analyzing data from multi-platform genomics experiments combined with patients’ clinical outcomes helps us understand the complex biological processes that characterize a disease, as well as how these processes relate to the development of the disease. Current integration approaches that treat the data are limited in that they do not consider the fundamental biological relationships that exist among the data from platforms.

Statistical Model: We propose an integrative Bayesian analysis of genomics data (iBAG) framework for identifying important genes/biomarkers that are associated with clinical outcome. This framework uses a hierarchical modeling technique to combine the data obtained from multiple platforms …


Members’ Discoveries: Fatal Flaws In Cancer Research, Jeffrey S. Morris Jan 2010

Members’ Discoveries: Fatal Flaws In Cancer Research, Jeffrey S. Morris

Jeffrey S. Morris

A recent article published in The Annals of Applied Statistics (AOAS) by two MD Anderson researchers—Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes—dissects results from a highly-influential series of medical papers involving genomics-driven personalized cancer therapy, and outlines a series of simple yet fatal flaws that raises serious questions about the veracity of the original results. Having immediate and strong impact, this paper, along with related work, is providing the impetus for new standards of reproducibility in scientific research.


Statistical Contributions To Proteomic Research, Jeffrey S. Morris, Keith A. Baggerly, Howard B. Gutstein, Kevin R. Coombes Jan 2010

Statistical Contributions To Proteomic Research, Jeffrey S. Morris, Keith A. Baggerly, Howard B. Gutstein, Kevin R. Coombes

Jeffrey S. Morris

Proteomic profiling has the potential to impact the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of various diseases. A number of different proteomic technologies are available that allow us to look at many proteins at once, and all of them yield complex data that raise significant quantitative challenges. Inadequate attention to these quantitative issues can prevent these studies from achieving their desired goals, and can even lead to invalid results. In this chapter, we describe various ways the involvement of statisticians or other quantitative scientists in the study team can contribute to the success of proteomic research, and we outline some of the …


Bayesian Random Segmentationmodels To Identify Shared Copy Number Aberrations For Array Cgh Data, Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani, Yuan Ji, Rajesh Talluri, Luis E. Nieto-Barajas, Jeffrey S. Morris Jan 2010

Bayesian Random Segmentationmodels To Identify Shared Copy Number Aberrations For Array Cgh Data, Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani, Yuan Ji, Rajesh Talluri, Luis E. Nieto-Barajas, Jeffrey S. Morris

Jeffrey S. Morris

Array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) is a high-resolution high-throughput technique for studying the genetic basis of cancer. The resulting data consists of log fluorescence ratios as a function of the genomic DNA location and provides a cytogenetic representation of the relative DNA copy number variation. Analysis of such data typically involves estimation of the underlying copy number state at each location and segmenting regions of DNA with similar copy number states. Most current methods proceed by modeling a single sample/array at a time, and thus fail to borrow strength across multiple samples to infer shared regions of copy number aberrations. …