Bioinformatics Researchers

This is an alphabetical list of bioinformatics groups at the University of Bristol. If you would like to have your bioinformatics group added to this page then please send an E-mail request.

Gary Barker

  • Links: Home page
  • Affiliation: School of Biological Sciences
  • Keywords: Clustering; PERL; database; phylogenetic analysis.
  • Bioinformatics: "High through-put automated sequence management (quality trim to blast result parsing) using a custom PERL/MySQL Linux based LIMS. Web database integration using ISAPI PERL and MySQL under Win2K/IIS5. Large scale clustering using CAP3 and d2cluster. PERL scripted automated SNP detection in large datasets (using redundancy). Phylogentic analysis"
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    Colin Campbell

  • Links: Group page
  • Affiliation: Department of Engineering Mathematics
  • Keywords: Bayesian; cancer; variational; kernel; network.
  • Bioinformatics: "My interests are machine learning, bioinformatics and cancer informatics. With machine learning my interests have largely focussed on kernel-based methods and probabilistic graphical models (PGMs). With PGMs I have developed a variety of variational Bayesian methods for unsupervised and semi-supervised learning in addition to methods for handling multiple types of genomic data. Thus, for example, our methods have been used to resolve cancer expression array data into tentative subtypes, to identify dysregulated genes within these subtypes and these latter have been the targets for knockdown studies using small interferring RNAs (siRNA). Recently I have become interested in network reconstruction problems: this involves probabilistic methods and data fusion since multiple types of data are required to achieve network inference at an acceptable level for use by biologists."
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    Nello Cristianini

  • Links: Home page | Pattern analysis and Intelligent systems | Computational genomics
  • Affiliation: Departments of Engineering Maths and Computer Science
  • Keywords: Gene family evolution; genomic data fusion; transcriptional regulation.
  • Bioinformatics: "The Pattern Analysis group has a core interest in genomic data analysis. Our work has ranged from the analysis of gene family evolutions to the investigation of techniques for heterogeneous data fusion and information integration, and to the analysis of gene expression data."
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    Tijl de Bie

  • Links: Home page | Pattern analysis and Intelligent systems
  • Affiliation: Department of Engineering Mathematics
  • Keywords: Gene family evolution; genomic data fusion; transcriptional regulation.
  • Bioinformatics: "The Pattern Analysis group has a core interest in genomic data analysis. Our work has ranged from the analysis of gene family evolutions to the investigation of techniques for heterogeneous data fusion and information integration, and to the analysis of gene expression data."
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    Philip Donoghue

  • Links: Home page
  • Affiliation: Department of Earth Sciences
  • Keywords: Phylogenetics; organismal complexity, evolution; palaebiology.
  • Bioinformatics: "Our group works on phylogenetics of morphological and molecular datasets, with particular interest in the role of genome duplication and the emergence of vertebrates. Recently we have been exploiting the SuperFamily database as part of a study of the emergence of complexity in organismal evolution."
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    Julian Gough

  • Links: Group page | SUPERFAMILY database
  • Affiliation: Department of Computer Science
  • Keywords: Evolution; genomes; domains; architectures; protein structure; interaction network; sequence analysis.
  • Bioinformatics: "Our underlying theme is that of molecular evolution, in particular with respect to the evolution of the repertoire of proteins, domains, architectures and families in genomes. This applies our expertise in 3D protein structure as well as biological sequence analysis to genomics. Development and maintenance of the SUPERFAMILY database (HMMs) provides much of the data for investigation. We contribute bioinformatics analysis to the FANTOM consortium in areas such as: non-coding RNA, protein-protein interactions, cDNA sequence annotation, domain prediction.
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    Claire Grierson

  • Links: Laboratory page | Home page
  • Affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences
  • Keywords: Development; root hair; virtual cell.
  • Bioinformatics: "We are interested in root hair development and differentiation. Starting with the genetic network of root hair growth, which enabled us to identify gene products of central importance, we continue to pursue several gene functions in detail whilst simultaneously using "top down" approaches to the network as a whole."
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    Guy Nason

  • Links: Home page
  • Affiliation: Mathematics Department
  • Keywords: Protein; microarray.
  • Bioinformatics: "Due to other commitments, no major programme in Bioinformatics right now. Generally interested in Bioinformatics and protein structure prediction. Has worked in variance stabilization methods for microarray intensities"
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    Dek Woolfson

  • Links: Group page
  • Affiliation: Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry
  • Keywords: Coiled-coil proteins; protein design; sequence-to-structure relationships.
  • Bioinformatics: "Our research in the area of bioinformatics focuses on the establishment, understanding and testing of sequence-to-structure relationships in proteins. We are particularly interested in the of alpha-helical coiled-coil structural class. We use tools developed in our lab and others from other coiled-coil research labs to identify coiled coils in the protein sequence and structural databases, and then relate to establish 'rules' that define coiled-coil stability, oligomer state and partner selection. In addition, we have developed a coiled-coil classification system, and a relational database to improve coiled-coil analysis. In turn, we use these rules and understanding in protein-structure prediction and experimental design studies."
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