Bioinformatics in the Era of Genomics and Big Data

by Dr Emile Chimusa (Division of Human Genetics, Department of Pathology, University Of Cape Town)

Friday 10 Nov 2017, 12:00 → 13:00 Africa/Johannesburg

CHPC Boardroom (CHPC)

Advanced in Bioinformatics and sequencing technologies including next generation, whole genome, RNA and exome sequencing technologies provide unprecedented opportunities to catalogue the spectrum of individual genetic variation, to isolate disease-causing variants and causative mutations relevant for diagnosis and therapy. This research is extremely relevant to the local setting and addresses very important health issues in the country, particularly it covers two key strategic focus areas of the Department of Sciences & Technology, namely Bioinformatics and Health. Furthermore, Bioinformatics becomes increasingly crucial to all areas of Biology and Biomedical research as the data volumes generated by researchers increase large amounts of data, such researches enable a range of applications from Medical population genetics to precision medicine. In this talk, I will describe our work at CHPC and tantalise on genetic risk prediction.