The Bioinformatics Department integrates computational biology, genomics, and molecular medicine to address complex questions in human health and infectious diseases. One major research focus is the genetic, molecular, and clinical characterization of neurological and rare genetic disorders. Areas of study include essential tremor, leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, rare metabolic syndromes such as sphingosine phosphate lyase insufficiency syndrome (SPLIS), and disorders of sex development like testicular disorder. Large-scale sequencing data combined with clinical phenotyping and molecular analyses enable the identification of novel disease mechanisms, potential therapeutic targets, and insights into aging and human health, supporting precision medicine approaches.
A complementary focus of the department is computational virology and viral sequence diversity. Advanced, big data-ready tools are employed to quantify DNA, RNA, and protein diversity, dissect viral sequence motifs, and determine minimal sets of viral peptides for studying immune evasion and viral evolution. Applications include analysis of high-impact datasets, such as SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 sequences, providing insights into conserved and variable viral regions and informing vaccine and therapeutic design. Together, these two research aspects bridge computational methods with genomics and clinical research, fostering innovative strategies to understand genetic disease, viral evolution, and the molecular foundations of human health.
Active Labs within Bioinformatics
- Onat Lab
- Khan Lab
