Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
The quest to organize the prokaryotic virosphere
A rigorous classification system is foundational for biology. However, viruses offer particularly problematic classification challenges. This is because in any gram of soil or milliliter of seawater there can be many millions to billions of viruses. We can only recently “see” them (using molecular methods) and they are all busy exchanging genes between each other and with their hosts in ways that paradigms suggest should undermine any genome-based taxonomy. However, we wanted to ask the question of whether simply looking at shared genes between viruses using networks could get us on the right track towards organizing the mostly unknown and unmapped viral sequence space.
Integrating laboratory tests for deep phenotyping and biomarker discovery
Clinical laboratory tests are one of the key components of electronic health records and contain rich patient phenotypic information. However, there are often multiple similar laboratory tests for the same medical issue, creating a data integration problem when being used for translational research. In our paper, we presented a novel approach that allows one to semantically integrate laboratory tests by mapping their results into Human Phenotype Ontology terms. The transformation generated detailed patient phenotypic profiles that can be used for biomarker screen.
