The Davidson laboratory uses computer science and mathematics to analyse complex gene sequencing data, to better understand disease and development.
The transcriptome, which is the molecular read-out of the genome, can be altered in disease. A focus of our research is developing novel bioinformatics methods to identify changes to the transcriptome in cancer, using data generated by contemporary and emerging transcriptome sequencing technologies.
A core area of interest for the Davidson laboratory is developing computational methods that capture novel transcripts beyond those documented in the annotation of the human reference genome. Our research is applied to cancer, where disease-causing variants – both structural rearrangements and small mutations – can alter gene structure to produce novel splicing, fusion genes or other rearrangements in the RNA.
We are exploring how advanced sequencing technologies such as long-read and single-cell, as well as large cohorts of sequencing data from cancer patients, can be used to identify and profile transcribed structural variants that drive cancer.
The computational methods we develop are shared with the medical research community as open source software. In addition to developing new bioinformatics tools, our laboratory is involved in collaborative projects that utilise high throughput sequencing with other groups within and external to WEHI.
