Systems Biology/Big Data

This research theme explores how Systems-type and Big Data-based approaches can be used to advance our understanding of the pathogenesis of infectious diseases.

Recent technical advances such as transcriptomic and proteomic analyses, genome-wide screens and next generation / whole genome sequencing have led to the accumulation of huge amounts of data. Linking these datasets derived from patients or experimental models to disease has become a major challenge in healthcare research, including infectious diseases. Edinburgh with it’s supercomputing facilities and as the “Data Capital of Europe” is particular strong in Systems-type approaches, Big Data management and Medical Informatics, and thus particularly suitable to apply this type of approach to infectious diseases. Principal investigators in our Division apply these approaches for example to gain insight into the host microbiome by next generation sequencing, host susceptibility by genome-scale RNA interference screens and biomarkers for severe infections by transcriptomic research.