Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute

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ZNI Mini-Symposium: "Advancing Biomedical Technologies" Monday 05/21/2012: 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM Health Sciences Campus Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute Herklotz Seminar Room / ZNI 112 1:00PM "INTERPRETING PERSONAL GENOMES"<br>Kai Wang PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences<br>Next-generation sequencing on human genomes is revolutionizing many areas of biomedical importance. However, how to infer functional roles of millions of genetic variants in a given subject remains a critical challenge. I will describe bioinformatics tools for personal genome annotation, to help researchers extract biological insights and help clinicians implement genomic medicine.<br><br>2:00PM "INTEGRATIVE ANALYSIS OF HETEROGENEOUS GENOMICS DATA"<br>Jasmine (Xianghong) Zhou PhD, Associate Professor, Computational Biology<br>The rapid accumulation of genomics data in public repositories poses new challenges on powerful methods for integrative analysis. We developed a tensor computation framework for pattern mining across many massive weighted biological networks, as well as a joint matrix factorization approach to perform analysis of multi-dimensional genomics profiling of the same set of samples. We apply the method to the mRNA, miRNA, and methylation profiles of 385 ovarian tumor samples from the Cancer Genome Atlas Project, and uncovered the cross-layer coordinated patterns and implications across multiple ‘omic’ data.<br><br>3:00PM "COMPUTER VISION IN THE STUDY OF MICROTUBULE DYNAMICS"<br> Le Ma PhD, Assistant Professor, Cell & Neurobiology<br>We have developed an approach based on computer vision to study microtubule assembly in cells. From only a pair of fluorescent images, we can determine assembly dynamics at each labeled end and provide a snapshot of microtubule regulation in space. This novel approach can be used to study microtubule dynamics in many cellular processes, including cell migration and growth cone guidance.<br><br>3:45PM "GETTING STRUCTURES WHERE IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE BEFORE – WITH SOLID-STATE NMR"<br>Ansgar Siemer PhD, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology<br>Solid-state NMR is an emerging technique in structural biology that enables us to get atomic-resolution structures of systems that are difficult to investigate with other methods such as solution NMR or X-ray crystallography. I will illustrate the power and versatility of this technique by giving examples of solid-state NMR on amyloid fibrils, membrane proteins, and protein-solvent interactions.