Ph.D. Research Proposal - Analysis of Host-Pathogen Interactions: A Bioinformatics Approach
Date: September 28, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Bossone Research Enterprise Center, Room: 709
Speaker(s):
Will Dampier
Advisor: Aydin Tozeren, Ph.D.
Details:
The specific aim of my doctoral thesis is to examine the protein interactions between a viral pathogen and its human host. The analysis of infectious diseases is a two body problem, factors from both the host and pathogen influence the outcome of a disease. Recent research has elucidated that a viral pathogen hijacks the host’s cellular machinery using binding motifs that are found in the host proteome to further its own lifecycle. In my preliminary studies I used machine learning techniques to find the motifs which can differentiate between patients who respond to therapy and those that continue to worsen. I have shown that the specific combination of host binding motifs on the HIV-1 viral sequence can be used to predict the therapeutic outcome of a patient in a cohort of more than a thousand HIV-1 patients undergoing multiple therapeutic interventions. Many of these variable motifs indicate that the interactions in the apoptosis cascade are important to the distinction between responder and non-responder status. I have integrated these interactions into my previously published apoptosis model. Future work will elucidate how these variable motifs alter the apoptosis cascade and lead to the diverse set of responses that are observed in a clinical setting.
Biosketch:
Directions:
The Bossone Research Enterprise Center is located at the corner of 32nd and Market Streets.
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