Innovation in Biomedical Research

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Innovation in Biomedical Research

• The Initiative for Bioinformatics and
  Evolutionary Studies

a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence
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Creativity is the process of manipulating
existing resources into new relationships,
innovation is the process of zeroing in on
effective ideas and finding ways to put those new
relationships into action.
http//www.leader-values.com/Content/newsletter2.a
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Interdisciplinary and Interactive
Mathematics Statistics Computer science
Biology Ecology Genomics
Interdisciplinary Research Bioinformatics and
Computational Biology
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Collaboration
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Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE)

• The evolution of pathogens and parasites affects
  human health
• development and spread of drug resistance
• pathogen host switching,
• evasion of immune surveillance,
• horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes.
• Not clear how these actually occur.
• To design treatment and prevention strategies we
  need to understand
• how organisms respond to selective pressure,
• which factors influence extant diversity,
• what factors drive the tempo and trajectory of
  evolutionary processes.
• By coupling knowledge from empirical studies and
  mathematical models it is possible to identify
  key variables, predict the outcomes of
  evolutionary events, and explore untested
  possibilities.

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Evolution of plasmids important vectors of drug
resistance
Project Director Dr. Eva Top
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Evolution in bacterial biofilms
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Emergence of diversity in bacterial biofilms

• Heritable differences among clones
• Colony morphology
• Carbon sources metabolized
• Growth rates and carrying capacity
• Frequency of rpoS mutants
• Frequency of antibiotic resistance mutations
• Spectrum of antibiotic resistance

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Democratization of Genomics Technologies
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Western Regional Bioinformatics Network
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Coevolution in the human microbiome
A challenge Data and metadata analysis
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