[Jan 25, 2018] SFU-Omics Group 8th Meeting - Mosquitos and Epidemiology

Post date: Jan 28, 2018 8:55:54 PM

Despite the snow, the first SFU-Omics Group meeting of 2018 had a great turnout!

We were happy to kickoff a new year with two great talks by Heather Coatsworth and Dr. Leonid Chindelevitch!

"Engineering resistance in Aedes aegpti using an 'omics pipeline' " - Heather Coatsworth

Millions of people around the world are infected with Dengue Fever every year. The disease is spread by mosquito, primarily Aedes aegpti, however ~30% of those found in Columbia are refractory – they do not transmit the disease. Heather is performing a comprehensive investigation about what makes certain mosquitos refractory including a look at the microbiome, gene expression, and structural variations in DNA.

"Computational analysis of bacterial diversity" - Dr. Leonid Chindelevitch

Dr. Chindelevitch and his lab are taking a computational approach to epidemiology and in particular, Tuberculosis. Talking about epidemiology is to talk about diversity: How different strains are present in a population, how different strains are present in a host, how some strains can be drug resistsant and others not.

We hope to see you next time!