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Albert Sherman Center

The Department of Genomics and Computational Biology occupies 7,000 square-feet on the 4th and 5th floors of the Albert Sherman Center (ASC). The ASC cutting edge design integrates research and teaching in an exciting collaborative environment.

Albert Sherman Center

UMass Chan-led study finds regularly updating cognitive data improves ability to predict Alzheimer’s disease

A large longitudinal study found that regular cognitive assessments improves the ability to predict whether someone will develop Alzheimer’s in their lifetime.

Category: Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences,School of Medicine,Medicine,Faculty,Research,Latest News,Top Stories

Nature Communications, 12, 73. January 2021

Long first exons and epigenetic marks distinguish conserved pachytene piRNA clusters from other mammalian genes.

The piRNA loci are transcribed by RNA polymerase II in the male germline of placental mammals. Here the authors show that a long first exon or a long unspliced transcript correlates with germline-specific production of piRNA precursor transcripts and mature piRNAs.

Nature, Volume 587 Issue 7833, 12 November 2020

Although genome sequencing is increasingly routine for humans, it remains much less common in most other species, and only a small portion of the diversity of life is represented in genomic databases. In this issue, three papers take steps to redress the balance, exploring uncharted branches of vertebrate evolution. In one paper, Guojie Zhang and colleagues from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project compare 363 genomes representing more than 90% of avian families, including 267 newly sequenced bird species. In another paper, Elinor Karlsson and her colleagues in the Zoonomia Project describe their analysis of 240 genomes representing more than 80% of placental mammal families, including 122 newly sequenced species. To analyze these massive data sets, both teams used new software called Progressive Cactus, which is described by Benedict Paten and co-workers in the third paper. The software can align thousands of genomes spanning hundreds of millions of years of evolution by reconstructing ancestral genomes using cactus graphs. The cover image reflects this process, using stylized mathematical graphs to highlight the software used and create constellations of some species sequenced in this week’s issue.

Principal Investigators
Nezar Abdennur, Ph.D.
Andres Colubri, Ph.D.
Manuel Garber, Ph.D
Raluca Gordan, Ph.D.
Elinor Karlsson, Ph.D.
Jill Moore, Ph.D.
Jacob Schreiber, Ph.D.
Lingfei Wang, Ph.D.
Zhiping Weng, Ph.D.

Research Faculty
Frances Chen, DVM, Ph.D.
Alper Kucukural, Ph.D.
Rachel Daniels, Ph.D.
Tianxiong Yu, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist
Carolina Salomao Lopes, Ph.D.

Research Specialist
Kathryn Lord, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellows
Yuming Cao, Ph.D.
Alyssa Funk, Ph.D.
Mingshi Gao, Ph.D.
Matthew Pollard, Ph.D.
Felix Raimundo, Ph.D.

Bioinformaticians
Greg Andrews, Ph.D.
Azita Ghodssi, Ph.D.
Thomas Jacob
Mansi Khandpekar
Ben Kresge
Nishigandha Phalke
Huong Phan
Zeeshan Siddiqui
Ross Swofford

Mobile App Developer
Andonaq Grozdani

Software Engineers
Conrad Bzura
Jonathan Fisher
Matt Lacadie
Jair Meza

Research Program Manager
Vedat Yilmaz

Research Associate
John Holik

Project Manager
Brittney Kenney

Project Coordinator
Alyssa Lima

Graduate Students
Shaimae Elhajjajy
Courtney Hatton
Christopher Husted
Winnie Mkandawire
Christian Ramirez (PREP)
Thomas Reimonn
Shuo (Crystal) Shan
Nicole Shedd
Vista Sohrab
Askar Temirbek
Yuqing Wang

Visiting Scholars