Project Team: Scott Nuismer (PI), Chris Remien (Co-PI), James Bull (Co-PI), Andrew Basinski Viral vaccines have had remarkable and long-lasting impacts on human health, resulting in the worldwide eradication of smallpox, the elimination of polio within much of the developed world, and the effective control of many other diseases. Although great strides have been made…
Project Team: Audrey Fu (PI), Bhadur Badsha, Evan Martin In the investigation of the mechanisms behind gene regulation and its impact on diseases, two lines of research have been largely separately carried out in recent years. On the one hand, gene regulatory networks and protein interaction networks have been under extensive study, especially in systems…
Project Team: Christopher J. Marx, Ankur Dalia (Indiana University), Sergey Stolyar, Jeremy Draghi (Brooklyn College), Norma Martinez-Gomez (Michigan State University) Epistasis – non-linear interactions between genotypic changes upon phenotypes –represents a critical challenge to optimization of biological systems, whether by evolution or engineered via synthetic biology. When mutational effects upon growth or product generation depend…
Project Team: Helen Brown (PI), Christopher Murphy, Chantal Vella, Marco Mesa-Frias, Michelle Wiest This project will aim to develop or adapt an existing model to generate small area estimates in Idaho counties of the factors that place individuals at highest risk for obesity (e.g. sedentary behaviors, food insecurity, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption). Knowledge of the local…
Project Director: Mark McGuire Project Team: Janet Williams, Sarah Brooker, Chris Remien, Ben Ridenhour, JT Van Leuven Myriad microbial communities within and on the human body interact constantly with each other and environmental factors, and although much work has focused on characterizing these various community structures (especially in adults), almost nothing is known about how…
Project Team: Alex Vakanski (PI), Stephen Lee, Jake Ferguson The current methods in the literature for representing human motions are based on modeling the movements at a single level of abstraction, either at a low-level (i.e., trajectory level) of abstraction or at the high-level (i.e., symbolic level) of abstraction. The proposed project will exploit the latest advances in…
Project Team: Deborah Stenkamp (PI), Diana Mitchell, Robert Mackin, Jagdish Patel Gene replication is an established mechanism for the generation of raw genetic material upon which evolution may act. For example, tandem replication of genes to generate arrays of paralogs underlies functional diversification in vertebrate sensory systems. Tandem replication of opsin (visual pigment) genes and subsequent neofunctionalization provide…
Project Team: Paul Rowley (PI), Jagdish Patel The interaction of host proteins with lentiviruses and other retroviruses and retrotransposons represents a major research theme of the Rowley lab. The proposed work fits well with the mission of the NIH and is a field of study that has traditionally been well supported. Dr. Rowley is fully…
Project Team: Berna Devezer (PI), Erkan Buzbas, Gustavo Nardin Reproducibility of scientific findings has long been considered a pillar of science. However, in the last decade, many disciplines life sciences have failed to reproduce major research findings. This reproducibility crisis has triggered a shift to revise current research practices. Examples include how to make biomedical findings more reproducible…
Project Director: Bert Baumgaertner Project Team: Joseph DeAguero How pathogens spread through a population can be complicated by a number of factors. One of them is pathogen interaction during co-infection. Here infection by one pathogen can change host susceptibility to a second, or being co-infected can change a host’s infectivity compared to a singly infected…