GeenaR: a flexible approach to pre-process, analyse and compare MALDI-ToF mass spectra

Mass spectrometry is a set of technologies with many applications in characterizing biological samples. Due to the huge quantity of data, often biased and contaminated by different source of errors, and the amount of results that is possible to extract, an easy-to-learn and complete workflow is essential. GeenaR is a robust web tool for pre-processing, analysing, visualizing and comparing a set of MALDI-ToF mass spectra. It combines PHP, Perl and R languages and allows different levels of control over the parameters, in order to adapt the work to the needs and expertise of the users.

An introduction to next generation sequencing for studying omic-environment interactions.

In this talk, first, we review the concept of gene-environmental interaction on the light of emerging results and the use of modern high-throughput technologies; we illustrate its impact on the understanding of complex human diseases. Then, we provide an overview of the methods available to process NGS data with particular emphasis to the detection of genomic variants, the analysis of epigenomic and transcriptional data produced by modern sequencers. Finally, we discuss how multiomic data can be used to improve our way of studying complex diseases and can provide novel research perspectives.

An atlas of gene expression and gene co-regulation in the human retina

The human retina is a specialized tissue involved in light stimulus transduction. Despite its unique biology, an accurate reference transcriptome is still missing. Here, we performed gene expression analysis (RNA-seq) of 50 retinal samples from non-visually impaired post-mortem donors. We identified novel transcripts with high confidence (Observed Transcriptome (ObsT)) and quantified the expression level of known transcripts (Reference Transcriptome (RefT)). The ObsT included 77 623 transcripts (23 960 genes) covering 137 Mb (35 Mb new transcribed genome).

Rank-revealing decomposition of symmetric indefinite matrices via block anti-triangular factorization

We present an algorithm for computing a symmetric rank revealing decomposition of a symmetric n x n matrix A, as defined in the work of Hansen & Yalamov [9]: we factorize the original matrix into a product A = QMQ(T), with Q orthogonal and M symmetric and in block form, with one of the blocks containing the dominant information of A, such as its largest eigenvalues.

A macroscopic mathematical model for cell migration assays using a real-time cell analysis

Experiments of cell migration and chemotaxis assays have been classically performed in the so-called Boyden Chambers. A recent technology, xCELLigence Real Time Cell Analysis, is now allowing to monitor the cell migration in real time. This technology measures impedance changes caused by the gradual increase of electrode surface occupation by cells during the course of time and provide a Cell Index which is proportional to cellular morphology, spreading, ruffling and adhesion quality as well as cell number.

Tuning of level-set speed function for speckled image segmentation

The segmentation of speckled images, as the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, is usually recognized as a very complex problem, because of the speckle, multiplicative noise, which produces granular images. In segmentation problems, based on level set method, the evolution of the curve is determined by a speed function, which is fundamental to achieve a good segmentation. In this paper we propose a study of the new speed function obtained by the linear combination of image average intensity and image gradient speed functions.