Differential co-expression in DNA microarray data and it's application to animal health

在感染和疾病期间，宿主和病原体之间的许多相互作用发生在分子或细胞水平上。来自宿主和病原体的DNA、RNA和蛋白质分子都相互作用，产生疾病和宿主免疫反应，这两个方面都值得研究。过去十年发展起来的技术现在使我们能够测量在任何给定的生物样本中存在的这些分子的数量。通过仔细设计感染前后涉及宿主和病原体的实验，我们可以收集关于这些状态之间存在的生物重要分子的差异的数据。组合这些不同实验的数据以推断这些分子如何相互作用是一个巨大的挑战，这将需要计算、数学和统计方面的技能。最近的出版物，包括这一建议的作者的一篇，已经表明，分析这些分子何时何地相互作用(称为共表达)会导致关于疾病机制和宿主免疫反应的新信息。我们打算开发这些技术，并将其应用于动物健康研究所收集的有关重要农场动物疾病的数据，以试图了解感染、疾病和宿主免疫反应。

Many of the interactions between the host and pathogen during infection and disease occur at the molecular or cellular level. DNA, RNA and protein molecules, from both host and pathogen, all interact with one another to create the disease and the host immune response, both of which are interesting to investigate. Techniques developed over the last ten years now enable us to measure the quantities of these molecules that are present in any given biological sample. By carefully designing experiments involving both host and pathogen, both before and after infection, we can gather data on the differences between these states in terms of the biologically important molecules which are present. Combining data from these various experiments in order to infer how these molecules interact is a large challenge which will require skills in computing, mathematics and statistics. Recent publications, including one by the author of this proposal, have shown that analysing when and where these moelcules interact (termed co-expression) leads to new information regarding the mechanism of disease and the host immune response. We intend to develop and apply these techniques to data gathered at the institute for animal health on important farm animal diseases, in an attempt to understand infection, disease and the host immune response.