Wyeth W. Wasserman

The field of bioinformatics uses computers to study biological data.

"Bioinformatics is now a part of all aspects of biomedical research. Computers have been integrated at every stage along the way," says Dr. Wasserman.

Dr. Wasserman's laboratory is all computers. There are no sinks or chemicals or biological cells. His lab combines biological data, mathematical models, and computer algorithms to unravel how genes are turned off and on.

"Finding the control switches in the DNA sequences of genes, the regulatory regions, is hard. Our novel computer programs help pinpoint where the on/off switches are located," explains Dr. Wasserman. "This allows us to look for changes in those switches that can cause disease."

The Wasserman laboratory works in close partnership with all labs at the CMMT. They depend on collaborators to obtain the biological data needed to develop their mathematical models. In turn, the biology labs gain expertise and powerful computational tools to probe and analyze their data.

"We need a place where it's expected and culturally present that you're going to work collaboratively," says Dr. Wasserman. "That's a very strong feature of the CMMT."

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS & PUBLICATIONS

Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award – 2004

Canadian Institutes for Health Research New Investigator Award – 2004

Andersen MC, Engström PG, Lithwick S, Arenillas D, Eriksson P, Lenhard B, Wasserman WW, Odeberg J. In silico detection of sequence variations modifying transcriptional regulation. PLoS Computational Biology. 2008 Jan;4(1):e5.

Portales-Casamar E, Kirov S, Lim J, Lithwick S, Swanson MI, Ticoll A, Snoddy J, Wasserman WW. PAZAR: a framework for collection and dissemination of cis-regulatory sequence annotation. Genome Biology. 2007 Sep 28;8(10):R207.