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, , , Posted on 25 January 2021 by

Scientists from NSU and PolyKnomics developed one of the world largest databases of genetic associations

This database stores tens of billions of associations of genetic variants with human traits, investigated by the scientific community in hundreds of studies. Knowledge of such associations allows for better understanding of human genetics and biology and can contribute to the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases. The results of the work were published in […]

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Glycosylation of immunoglobulin G is regulated by a large network of genes pleiotropic with inflammatory diseases

Immunoglobulin G (IgG) that plays central role in adaptive immunity is the most abundant immunoglobulin found in human plasma. All IgG molecules are N-glycosylated. N-glycosylation of IgG contributes to the maintenance of its structure, stability, and solubility. In a large collaborative study, we analysed association between genomes and glycosylation of immunoglobulin G (IgG) in more than […]

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, , , Posted on 7 May 2019 by

Understanding genetic control of human protein N-glycosylation

Glycosylation – addition of carbohydrates – is a common cotranslational and posttranslational modification of proteins. Attachment of different glycans to the same protein can give rise to hundreds of its glycoforms. Different glycosylation of the same glycoprotein changes its physical properties as well as its biological function. In recent years, changes in different glycan abundances were associated with various diseases, including many of these […]

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, , , , Posted on 22 February 2019 by

Genomic approach to determine psychological and anatomic determinants of back pain

Back pain is the number one cause of years lived with disability worldwide and one of the most common reasons for health care visits in developed countries, yet surprisingly little is known regarding the biology underlying this symptom. In our previous study1, published in Sept 2018, we identified three novel genetic variants associated with chronic […]

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, , , Posted on 1 February 2019 by

Genetic determinants of human healthspan

Aging populations face diminishing quality of life due to increased disease and morbidity. These challenges call for longevity research to focus on understanding the pathways controlling healthspan. A new study, led by dr. Peter Fedichev (Gero LLC) and prof. Yurii Aulchenko (PolyOmica), used the data from the UK Biobank to understand biology of healthspan1. We observed that the […]

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Posted on 12 December 2018 by

PolyOmica’s chief scientist is listed as Highly Cited Researcher

The Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers for 2018 identifies scientists who have demonstrated significant influence through the publication of multiple highly cited papers in the last decade. PolyOmica’s Chief Scientist, Yurii Aulchenko , was selected for his substantial influence across several fields in the period 2006–2016. Approximately 6,000 researchers are named Highly Cited Researchers in […]

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, , , , , Posted on 11 December 2018 by

Different pleiotropic scenarios determine joint distribution of human metabolite levels

Adding covariates can either increase or decrease the power of finding an effect of a predictor on the outcome of interest. In a recent publication in GigaScience we used knowledge of biochemical networks to select covariates for conditional genetic association analysis. We demonstrated that the power depends on whether genes and environment play along or […]

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, , , Posted on 28 September 2018 by

New Genetic Variants Associated with Chronic Back Pain

Back pain is the #1 cause of years lived with disability worldwide and one of the most common reasons for health care visits in developed countries, yet surprisingly little is known regarding the biology underlying this symptom. A new study, led by Pradeep Suri of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Seattle, Washington (U.S.A.) and […]

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, , Posted on 7 July 2018 by

Chronic inflammation and low back pain

Last Thursday, July 5, 2018, a manuscript1 reporting results from a large multicentric case-control study of patients with chronic lower back pain (CLBP) was published in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) – General Subjects. The work was funded by the EU FP7 project PainOmics in which we participate. The study of plasma N-glycome composition in patients […]

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Identification of sixty three multigenic modules involved in susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of inflammatory conditions of the colon and small intestine. Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the principal types of inflammatory bowel disease.  IBD was virtually unheard of in the early nineteen hundreds. Since then it’s incidence (as well as that of a series of other inflammatory diseases including asthma) has dramatically […]

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Teaching at the IMforFUTURE meeting in Zagreb

Logo of the IMforFUTURE project

From March 26–28, 2018 the IMforFUTURE International Training Network (ITN), in which PolyOmica is a partner, will have its first network meeting. The meeting will be held at the BioCentar in Zagreb, Croatia, and aside from various committee meetings and social events, the meeting will consist of training sessions for the fellows enrolled in the […]

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, , , , , , Posted on 28 February 2018 by

Teaching at the NIHES NGS course

The Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, NL

On Monday March 5 2018, I will be teaching at the NIHES course “An Introduction to the Analysis of Next-Generation Sequencing data” at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. In this one-week course students will learn the basics of how NGS data is generated and how to analyse this type of data. PolyOmica’s contribution to […]

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, , , , , Posted on 27 November 2017 by

Massive open online course “From Disease to Genes and Back” is open

In PolyOmica, we some times need to train people in the basics of genetics and genomics. While training people in basics is fun, it is quite time consuming, and is not exactly our company’s core activity. For a long time, we thought that it would be great to have a massive open online course (MOOC) […]

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Recorded lectures of the RSSSO 2014 now available on YouTube

Yurii Aulchenko lecturing at the RSSSO 2014

Back in 2014 we initiated the Research Summer School in Statistical Omics with the help of many friends and colleagues, and with the support (financial and other) from various sources, including the EU-funded MIMOmics project, in which we participate, and the EU-funded Integra-Life project. In a period of two weeks we immersed 13 students (and […]

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Teaching at the Research MIMOmics Summer School in Cambridge (UK)

https://www.mimomicsucam.com/

From 20 till 27 August, the EU FP7 consortium MIMOmics in which PolyOmica is a partner, organises a Summer School including a Workshop in Omics Studies. The goal of the School is to train a new generation of statistical omics scientists with a biological and biotechnological background to enable them to understand and to apply […]

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, , , , Posted on 23 January 2017 by

Teaching at the “Advances in GWAS” course in Rotterdam next week

The Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, NL

Next week (starting Monday January 30 2017) Yurii and I will be in Rotterdam at the Erasmus University Medical Center where we will teach in the “Advances in Genome-Wide Associations” course of NIHES. This course is part of the Master’s programme in Health Sciences and is compulsory for those who follow the specialisation “Genetic Epidemiology”. […]

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, , , , , , Posted on 14 November 2016 by

Improving transfer speeds for ZFS send/receive in a local network

atop screenshot

I recently had to send a couple of ZFS file systems from one server to another, both running Ubuntu Linux 16.04. Since both servers were in the same trusted local network, there was no need for encryption. As various other websites will tell you, the fastest way to transfer data over a local network is […]

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, , , , , Posted on 23 September 2016 by

Packing for the 4th annual MIMOmics meeting in Zagreb

We are currently preparing for a visit to Zagreb, Croatia, where we will attend the fourth annual meeting of the MIMOmics EU project on which we collaborate. The programme will covers topics like glycomics and metabolomics, statistical prediction based on multiple omics, casual inference, networks and epidemiology. So if you are in the vicinity of […]

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The 2016 Research Summer School in Statistical Omics

RSSSO2016 group photo

We have just returned from Split, Croatia, where we organised and co-sponsored the third Research School in Statistical Omics (RSSSO2016). With this Summer School we aim to train young researchers (at bachelor, master or PhD level) with a bio{logical,medical,chemical} background and interest in quantitative statistical methods to become the next generation of life scientists; these […]

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The GenABEL Project paper

Recently we published an overview paper of the GenABEL Project [1] on F1000Research. The GenABEL Project is a framework for collaborative, robust, transparent, open-source based development of statistical genomics methodology that PolyOmica sponsors. One of the reasons for publishing this overview paper was that we felt the need for a single, easy-to-point-to reference for the […]

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Detecting variants shared between traits, detecting potential causality from GWAS summary data

Pickrell et al. (Pickrell et al., 2016) come up with a very nice approach which uses summary-level data to detect variants exhibiting effects on multiple traits. They also propose use of multi-locus information to infer causative relations between traits. The manuscript starts with reminding the reader that the observed association between a genetic variant and multiple […]

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Better eQTLs for integrative functional genomics? – discussion on SMR/HEIDI

This is a follow-up post to the mini-review of the work of Zhu et al. [1] and is a reaction to tweet from @JosephPowell_UQ 🙂 In short, in Zhu et al. [1] have used eQTL results from peripheral blood to answer the question of potential biological function affected by genetic variation associated with five complex trait. Using such eQTLs may […]

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Integration of summary data from GWAS and eQTL studies

In this work, Zhu and colleagues [1] start with asking the question whether it would be possible to use summary-level data coming from GWAS of a complex trait coupled with eQTL association results to address the question of causality. Could the association observed for the complex trait be explained by changes in the level of a […]

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, , Posted on 31 May 2016 by

Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body

With interest we read a review/analysis paper [1] which questions the ‘common knowledge’ that we have ten times more bacteria on/in us than we we have cells. The authors make an interesting historical analysis tracing the ’10:1′ statement back to its origins (back to the beginning of 1970s!); based on analysis of more recent literature, they […]

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Posted on 30 May 2016 by

Welcome!

Dear visitors of the PolyOmica blog. This is the first post on our new website. We are very excited about having this new platform at disposal and plan to inform you regularly of the things we are working on. On this blog you can expect announcements of things we do, like upcoming courses, but also […]

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