Feb. 22, 2018

Genetic targets for autism spectrum disorder identified by MU team

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Autism is a spectrum of closely related symptoms involving behavioral, social and cognitive deficits. Early detection of autism in children is key to producing the best outcomes; however, searching for the genetic causes of autism is complicated by various symptoms found within the spectrum. Now, a multi-disciplinary team of researchers at the University of Missouri created a new computational method that has connected several target genes to autism. Recent discoveries could lead to screening tools for young children and could help doctors determine correct interventions when diagnosing autism. Unlocking the genetic causes of autism requires data-intensive computations.

Feb. 8, 2018

MU-LOC: A Deep Neural Network Method for Predicting Mitochondrially Localized Proteins in Plants

Targeting and translocation of proteins to the appropriate subcellular compartments is crucial for cell organization and function. Newly synthesized proteins are transported to mitochondria with the assistance of complex targeting sequences containing either an N-terminal pre-sequence or a multitude of internal signals. Compared with experimental approaches, computational predictions provide an efficient way to infer subcellular localization of a protein. However, it is still challenging to predict plant mitochondrially localized proteins accurately due to various limitations. Consequently, the performance of current tools can be improved with new data and new machine-learning methods. We present MU-LOC, a novel computational approach for large-scale…

Jan. 31, 2018

An Analysis of Diabetes Mobile Applications Features Compared to AADE7TM: Addressing Self-Management Behaviors in People with Diabetes

Diabetes Self-management (DSM) applications (apps) have been designed to improve knowledge of diabetes and self-management behaviors. However, few studies have systematically examined if diabetes apps followed the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) Self-Care BehaviorsTM guidelines. The purpose of this study was to compare the features of current DSM apps to the AADE7TM guidelines. In two major app stores, we used three search terms to capture a wide range of diabetes apps. Apps were excluded based on five exclusion criteria. A multidisciplinary team analyzed and classified the features of each app based on the AADE7TM. We conducted interviews with six…

Jan. 28, 2018

Collaborations across disciplines: MU Thyroid Nodule Electronic Database (MU-TNED), a multidisciplinary informatics approach

Thyroid nodules are common findings and thyroid cancer is projected to be one of the leading causes of cancer in women. The EHR includes the necessary data needed to connect clinical research with patient outcomes. The objective for this project was to develop and validate a usable informatics tool for clinicians and researchers to record, analyze, and be able to manipulate the clinical and research data to benefit all collaborators. The tool was specifically designed to enable follow-up in a longitudinal manner to support multiple aspects of research. The informatics tool MU-TNED was designed with a multidisciplinary team including the…

Dec. 19, 2017

An RNAmazing research breakthrough

Professor of Bioengineering and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center Li-Qun (Andrew) Gu and Shi-Jie Chen, joint Professor of Physics, Biochemistry and the MU Informatics Institute and their team recently published “Nanopore electric snapshots of an RNA tertiary folding pathway,” in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

Dec. 5, 2017

MODELING THE HIPPOCAMUS: FINELY CONTROLLED MEMORY STORAGE USING SPIKING NEURONS

The hippocampus, an area in the temporal lobe of the mammalian brain, participates in the storage of personal memories and life events, including traumatic memories and the consequent symptoms of post-traumatic stress, giving importance to the study of the machinery of hippocampal memory storage and retrieval. The circuit is known to be controlled by the neuromodulator Acetylcholine, which switches the circuit between the memory storage state and the memory retrieval state. We built a computational model of the hippocampus with the ability to perform both memory storage and retrieval functions, controlled by the level of Acetylcholine. This functional separation decrease…

Dec. 1, 2017

Use of the N-ary Relational Schema to Atomize Compound Relational Triples

Electronic medical records document health information in structured format and in unstructured free text format.  Health information in structured format contains laboratory results, vital signs, patient demographics etc.  The unstructured free text is the prime source of healthcare information documenting providers’ interpretations of health conditions, diagnoses, medical interventions, impressions, etc.  In order to uncover unknown information and search for patterns in health data with computational methods, we need to structure the unstructured free text data.  For that, we use information extraction, a computational technique for analyzing free text and deriving structured information.  Extracted information from free text can be represented…

Nov. 26, 2017

Effects of evolutionary pressure on histone modifications

With the advent of next-generation sequencing technologies, a considerable effort has been put into sequencing the epigenomes of different species. The efforts such as “Encode” and “Roadmap” epigenomics projects provide an opportunity to compare epigenomes across species (especially between human and mouse). This study is an effort to understand how different histone modifications vary/co-appear between orthologous regions of the two species. In this work, we have used various measures of orthologous similarity between each pair of orthologous genes and explore how histone modifications are conserved with respect to changes in these similarity measures. These measures of similarity include “codon usage…

Nov. 15, 2017

An Interventional Informatics Approach to Development and Evaluation of Population-based Health and Web Technologies

Interventional informatics is the use of health information technology (HIT) which drives evidence-based and evidence-generating practices to inform an improved health delivery system. Current HIT lacks movement towards data-driven infrastructures designed to promote information gathering, sharing, and new knowledge discovery in several areas. This thesis undertakes three specific areas where gaps exist. First, in undertaking quality improvement initiatives aligned with fidelity to program models, a web-based practice exchange was designed, built, tested and launched. Second, a systematic review of eHealth technology instruments for outcomes and evaluation components geared towards patient outcomes was conducted, uncovering gaps in the availability of psychometrically…