Organisms Commons^™

Laboratory And Epidemiological Characteristics Of Zika Virus Infections In Florida, Stephen L. White

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Until recently, Zika virus (ZIKV) was an obscure virus that rarely caused infections and was unknown to most. In 2015 and 2016, ZIKV came into the public spotlight as Brazil and other countries began to report large increases in infections with ZIKV and reported potential complications with developing fetuses and neurologic manifestations. In 2016, the state of Florida identified and responded to an outbreak of locally acquired ZIKV infections in Miami-Dade County. This dramatic increase in infections demonstrated both its importance as an emerging infectious disease and the paucity of knowledge surrounding ZIKV. This study seeks to utilize the data …

Scalable Profiling And Visualization For Characterizing Microbiomes, Camilo Valdes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Metagenomics is the study of the combined genetic material found in microbiome samples, and it serves as an instrument for studying microbial communities, their biodiversities, and the relationships to their host environments. Creating, interpreting, and understanding microbial community profiles produced from microbiome samples is a challenging task as it requires large computational resources along with innovative techniques to process and analyze datasets that can contain terabytes of information.

The community profiles are critical because they provide information about what microorganisms are present in the sample, and in what proportions. This is particularly important as many human diseases and environmental disasters …