Summary of Second Meeting – March 23rd, 2017

Post date: May 14, 2017 10:51:21 PM

We appreciate that about a dozen people came to the second meeting, even though it was during midterms! 

Omics in the News: 

We started today’s meeting by quickly covering some Omics related news. We talked about Canada’s Bill S-201: Genetic non-discrimination act and how it affects omics related research. Bill S-201 is a great step in protecting the rights of Canadians that want to undergo genetic testing. It protects them from being discriminated against based on the results of a genetic test or even their choice to take/disclose the results of a genetic test.

Terms of Reference:

We decided to take some time to discuss what “omics” means to everyone. The overarching theme in the responses was that “Omics” was the study of big datasets to study whole biological systems. People said that Omics is a hot topic. People mentioned the use of machine learning, multidimensional datasets from living organisms, data integration, and different layers of information to piece it all together and get a system wide picture. To put it simply, “take a thing and look at everything of it”. For example, GENEomics would be all of the genome and PROTEINomics would be all of the proteome. Other types of data mentioned included transcriptome and epigenome datasets.  People mentioned working in a system, which emphasizes the importance of understanding the genome structure, context of genes, and the function. People discussed clinical applications. Overall, omics is a pretty general holistic approach to study things.

Round table to Discuss Current Research Challenges

We also quickly discussed some issues or challenges people faced during the week. Subjects ranged from server problems to limitations found in popular programs. There was great discussion and comments from the people that came and it even lead to potential solutions for some cases! These solutions came in the form of suggestions and people with relevant expertise offering their help.

Talks:

Emerging tools and technologies in big data and cloud computing: Dr. Apala Guha

Dr. Guha gave a great summary of cloud-based computing advances and their applications in Omics. She highlighted the recent big changes in computing and how they relate to omics. This included highlighting some new libraries, such as Hadoop and TensorFlow.  Finally, she finished by explaining how software research influence science research and vice versa.

Exploring phasing techniques: Vanessa Guerra

Vanessa presented her research on exploring phasing techniques to try to find out which alleles her SNPs belong to. Her research is in gamete recognition genes in sea stars.  This presents unique challenges because it requires a de novo transcriptome pipeline since the sea stars being studied in her research do not have a reference genome.

Dr. Apala Guha presenting on emerging tools and technologies at the meeting.