Future Directions in the Analysis of Genomic Data

• Activity Number: 99
• Type: Other
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: ASA
• Author(s): Terence (Terry) Paul Speed*+ and Nancy Zhang*+
• Companies: Stanford University and Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
• Keywords: genomics ; computational biology ; DNA sequencing ; genome-wide profiling

Abstract

Current advances in biological research are fueled by high throughput, systematic, global profiling experiments. These experiments can be designed to assay, at increasing accuracy, the quantity of DNA and RNA, the level of protein binding, and many other genomic characteristics of interest. The massive data sets produced by these experiments motivate, indeed demand new statistical models and methods. In this talk, we will describe a few example profiling experiments, the statistical challenges they pose, the models that we have tried, and the lessons we have learned.

We will focus on data from high throughput, short read sequencing platforms, which are now becoming the bread and butter of these profiling experiments. In particular we will describe the analysis of sequencing data for DNA copy number estimation, RNA expression quantification, and protein binding assays.