Bio: Analysis of Metagenomic Networks

Recent findings of microbiology and genetics have concluded that while
sequencing the human genome is focal in understanding the human
condition, it proves to be insufficient: an understanding of the human
microbiome, the heterogeneous microbial communities that occur in the
immediate environment of the human organism, is also essential. This
is the study of metagenomics, for which new research and advancements
in information technology have made it possible to go beyond the full
genomic sequencing of an organism to that of its environment.

The structure of the data at hand when studying metagenomics makes
networks a natural mathematical approach. The aim of this working
group will be to first construct a network, or directed graph, to
represent the metagenome and its relation to the genome of the
organism. Once this representation has been established, topics of
interest are the networks themselves and the development techniques to
address noise and issues of data integrity; the relationship between
these two networks and handling discrepancies between them; and
addressing between- and within-network variation.