I don't have time to write about it properly, but this paper - the new transcriptome study of autism-spectrum brains, from Nature, makes me really excited. Comparing gene expression in a high throughput way, using microarrays - creating networks and identifying significant modules - using genome-wide association study data to back up your conclusions - this is awesome. This is the point of an entire module of my course this year! (1)
More to the point, this is kinda the point of the systems biology course I'm going to be doing next year. This is what I want to be doing. I haven't had a chance to look at the paper more critically yet, but I really hope it stands up to thorough analyses and follow-up work, because I think it showcases perfectly what new technologies and systems-level approaches can do. I hope that I'll see more of this kind of integrative study in future!
And now, back to the cave of revision... See you in two weeks!
(1) "Human genetics, genomics, and systems biology". Yeaaaahhh. I need to reference this paper in the exam!
'Transcriptomic analysis of autistic brain reveals convergent molecular pathology', Irina Voineagu, Xinchen Wang, Patrick Johnston, Jennifer K. Lowe, Yuan Tian, Steve Horvath, Jonathan Mill, Rita M. Cantor, Benjamin J. Blencowe & Daniel H. Geschwind, Nature (2011), doi:10.1038/nature10110
More to the point, this is kinda the point of the systems biology course I'm going to be doing next year. This is what I want to be doing. I haven't had a chance to look at the paper more critically yet, but I really hope it stands up to thorough analyses and follow-up work, because I think it showcases perfectly what new technologies and systems-level approaches can do. I hope that I'll see more of this kind of integrative study in future!
And now, back to the cave of revision... See you in two weeks!
(1) "Human genetics, genomics, and systems biology". Yeaaaahhh. I need to reference this paper in the exam!
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Reference:'Transcriptomic analysis of autistic brain reveals convergent molecular pathology', Irina Voineagu, Xinchen Wang, Patrick Johnston, Jennifer K. Lowe, Yuan Tian, Steve Horvath, Jonathan Mill, Rita M. Cantor, Benjamin J. Blencowe & Daniel H. Geschwind, Nature (2011), doi:10.1038/nature10110
