Microbial Bioinformatics
The tremendous growth of importance and the size of public biological databases has developed a profound progress in modern biology. Bioinformatics and Biostatistics play a prominent role in analyzing complex biological data. Students will learn practical data science skills, which will help them to transform large datasets into reproducible and reliable findings throughout this project. Students will use open-source tools (Unix Shell and R/RStudio) to solve issues in their field of research (cancer, urban microbiome, microbiology of the built environment, antimicrobial resistance, and mobile genetic elements such as plasmids and viruses) by applying bioinformatics and biostatistics skills.
For instance, students will use genome databases from various environments (public transportation, sewages, air, soils, plants, animals, and humans) to assess phylogenetic and functional diversity of microbial community, including mobile colistin resistance gene or cancer-related genes. Furthermore, students will study the relationship between the factors composing the microbial community like locations, population density, climate, and host taxonomy.