Investigating the players of our defense system
Using state-of-the-art systems biology approaches, you will investigate the differences in gene expression between the cell types. Additionally, we are interested in how these immune cells are affected by genetic variations, which are often associated with increased risk for human diseases.
Living cells are complex. The average human body consists of approximately 37 trillion cells each containing thousands of molecules that work together to enable the cell to carry out its specific function. In this project, you will specifically look at immune cells, the key players of our defense system.
The DICE database (database of immune cell expression, expression quantitative trait loci [eQTLs], and epigenomics) provides a high quality dataset with gene expression and eQTLs for 5 different immune-cell types in different activation stages (total of 15 datasets). This data will be used to build and analyze cell-type specific epigenetic regulatory networks.