14/11/2019

Thesis lecture of Lara Nonell on November, 19th at 11:00: "New approaches in omics data modelling"

Next tuesday, 19th of November, at 11:00 AM, Lara Nonell, member of the Computational Human Biology Group of GRIB will defense her thesis "New approaches in omics data modelling" at the Ramón y Cajal room on the ground floor of PRBB. You are all invited to this event.

Abstract: 

The breakthrough in the technological field has allowed the extraction of large amounts of the so-called omics data. The analysis and integration of this type of data by means of advanced statistical and bioinformatics methods will allow the improvement in the management of diseases. The diversity and complexity of omics data has encouraged the development of hundreds of new statistical methods to meet this objective. Therefore, having the appropriate methods to accommodate different data distributions and modelling complex data structures becomes essential. This thesis presents advances in three directions in this regard. First, the study of several methods to assess non-linear associations which is relevant when assessing the effect of environmental exposures (i.e exposome) on complex diseases. The study is accompanied by the development of the R package nlOmicAssoc. Second, the simplex distribution is proposed to analyse methylome data since this distribution properly fits beta values that are generated in this type of studies. The extension to generalized  linear models with simplex response is also proposed. Lastly, an R package, HOmics, has been developed to incorporate a priori biological knowledge into association studies by using Bayesian hierarchical models. It also implements methods to model the dependence between omics data, enabling data integration.