Description:

Department of Statistics Winter 2019 Seminar Series

Talk Title: Using Gene Expression to Tell Time

Speaker: Rosemary Braun, Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine (Biostatistics) and McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University

Time: 11:00am

Abstract: Determining the state of an individual’s internal physiological clock has important implications for precision medicine, from diagnosing neurological disorders to optimizing drug delivery. To be useful, such a test must be accurate, minimally burdensome to the patient, and robust to differences in patient protocols, sample collection, and assay technologies. In this talk I will present TimeSignature, a novel machine-learning algorithm to estimate circadian variables from gene expression in human blood. By making use of the high dimensionality of the gene expression measurements and exploiting the periodic nature of the circadian variables we wish to predict, TimeSignature can be applied to samples from disparate studies and yield highly accurate results despite systematic differences between the studies. This generalizability is unique amongst expression-based predictors and addresses a major challenge in the development of robust biomarker tests. This talk will detail the method, present several applications, and discuss our recent work to extend it.

Location: Department of Statistics, Room B02, 2006 Sheridan Rd, Evanston 60208