| Faculty name: | Mike Brudno |
|---|---|
| Research area: | Bioinformatics, Artificial Intelligence |
| Campus address: | PT 286C |
| Campus phone: | 416-978-2589 |
| Email address: |
brudno [at] dgp.toronto.edu
|
| Number of students: | 1 |
| Skills required: |
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When medical scientists decipher the genomes of multiple patients with a certain disorder, they often compare the frequencies of observed differences to those in healthy, or "control" individuals. If a certain genomic variant appears at a significantly different frequency in cases versus controls, it is a good candidate for follow-up study.
The accuracy of such comparisons, called Genome-Wide Association Studies, depends on having a set of controls that is well matched (i.e. coming from a similar ethnic background). While many projects have ascertained the genomes of thousands of healthy individuals, identifying a subset of these that matches a set of patients with a disorder is an open problem.
In this project you will be responsible for developing and implementing an algorithm, that given a very large set of healthy individuals, identifies a smaller subset of them that most closely matches a smaller disease cohort.