From Computational Biology Group
In collaboration with the group of Christian Fankhauser at CIG, UNIL, we developed the HypoPhen software for the high throughput quantification of seedling elongation and bending from time-lapsed images. Using this tool, hundreds of Arabidopsis seedlings were measured to show that phytochrome A in the nucleus is important for phototropism. The results have been published in Plant Cell on February 28 2012.
A genome-wide association study by the HYPERGENES Consortium unravelled a novel hypertension susceptibility locus in the promoter region of the eNOS gene and essential hypertension. The article appeared online in Hypertension on 19 December 2011.
In a recent work, we developed a general formalism allowing to model diffusive gradient formation from an arbitrary source. This formalism applies to various diffusion problems and we illustrate our theory with the explicit example of the Bicoid gradient establishment in Drosophila embryos. The article appeared online in Journal of Theoretical Biology on 10 November 2011.
On June 25 2010, during the 8th [BC]2 Computational Biology Conference in Basel, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics announced that CBG member [[Aitana Morton de Lachapelle]] is the winner of the SIB Young Bioinformatician Award 2010.
Our calcium meta-analysis paper was published in PLoS Genetics.
We published an application note about the ExpressionView bicluster visualization tool in Bioinformatics. Please see the [[ExpressionView]] page for more — documentation, downloads, screenshots — on ExpressionView.
In collaboration with Mehdi Tafti's research group we have published our recent discovery on a newly identified HLA haplotype that protects individuals from narcolepsy even if they carry the famous risk haplotype. Our article appeared online in Nature Genetics on 15 August 2010.
Via the CoLaus and Hypergenes cohorts our group contributed to the meta-analysis of the GIANT consortium that revealed hundreds of genetic variants associated with human height; 18 new loci for body mass index; and 13 new loci for waist-hip-ratio.
In collaboration with John Whittaker (GSK) we have published a new methodology to infer total explained variance of [[Genome Wide Association Studies | GWAS]] hits. Our method was applied to the most recent GIANT association summary statistics and revealed that GWAS hits explain at least 30% of human height variations. The article appeared online in Genetic Epidemiology on 6 April 2011.
In collaboration with the Basler group (University of Zurich), we developed a theoretical model allowing to understand which is the leading mechanism involved in the Dpp long range gradient formation. The article appeared online in PLoS Biology on 26 July 2011.
A collaborative study with the Kaessmann group on "The evolution of gene expression levels in mammalian organs" where we first applied the [[ISA]] to RNAseq data has been published online as article in Nature on 19 October 2011.
Sven Bergmann has successfully completed his tenure-track as Assistant Professor and is Associate Professor since August 2010.