Research Fellow Dr. Anastasia Gioti is back from France and ready to analyze multiple layers of information in the form of omic data, after attending the summer school “Multi-omics data analysis and integration”. This hands-on workshop was organized by the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (SIB) and covered multivariate statistics, network-based approaches, metabolic models, web semantic and knowledge graphs.
Jointly studying different types of -omic data originating from the same cells or conditions is a powerful approach to answer a number of research questions, from health to the environment. For instance, in the project PlastOmics (funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation) Dr. Gioti coordinated the generation of transcriptomic and secretomic data from fungi able to use PET and polyurethane as a carbon source for their growth. PlastOmics aims to identify new enzymes able to degrade such complex plastics in the context of circular economy efforts.
Gioti notes ‘the time-limiting and most challenging step in multi-omics studies relates to the integration of heterogeneous data into a single “matrix” that can be inquired’. This is why she applied for, and received, an ELIXIR Travel Grant to participate in the summer school. IMBBC is affiliated to ELIXIR, an intergovernmental organization that brings together life science resources from across Europe.
With recently acquired expertise from the summer school, researchers at IMBBC can now design better new multi-omics projects, towards the direction of marine systems biology.
