Andrew Su, Scripps Research Institute - Stanford Big Data 2015

TL;DR

Citizen scientists can effectively contribute to the analysis of biomedical literature, potentially leading to new research directions and potential treatments.

Transcript

so it's my pleasure to talk to you about the heart bd2k Center on behalf of the five principal investigators and center co-directors in particular dr. Pei Pei ping who is our center director at UCLA so the heart bd2k Center has three pillars at the core of this Center first we focus on omics profiling and in particular on proteomics analysis and in... Read More

Key Insights

• ❓ The success of genomic sequencing in finding treatments depends on the availability of well-structured biomedical knowledge.
• 😃 The biomedical literature is vast and constantly growing, making it a valuable source of big data.
• 🧑‍🔬 Non-scientists can contribute effectively to bio curation tasks through paid crowdsourcing and citizen science efforts.

Questions & Answers

Q: How does the SPR mutation in dopa responsive dystonia differ from the NY1 mutation?

The SPR mutation is well-known in biomedical knowledge, making it easier to find relationships between related diseases, enzymes, and metabolites. On the other hand, the NY1 mutation is less studied and lacks a well-structured map of biomedical knowledge.

Q: How can the biomedical literature be a rich source of big data?

The biomedical literature consists of millions of articles that are constantly being produced. It contains information on diseases, genes, variants, drugs, and more, which can be extracted to create a network of biological concepts and relationships.

Q: Can non-scientists contribute to bio curation tasks?

Yes, non-scientists can perform bio curation tasks at a high level, especially when their results are aggregated. Paid crowdsourcing and citizen science have both been successful in harnessing the contributions of non-scientists.

Q: How can citizen science efforts contribute to potential cures and treatments?

Citizen science efforts, such as the Mark to Cure platform, can help identify relationships between diseases, drugs, and genes in biomedical literature. This can lead to new research directions and potential treatments for patients.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The heart bd2k Center focuses on omics profiling, cardiovascular health, and community science.

• Genomic sequencing helped identify a treatment for two individuals with dopa responsive dystonia, while no treatment was found for another individual with a glycan mutation.

• The biomedical literature is a rich source of big data, and organizing this knowledge is crucial for interpreting experiments.