IMIB - Institute for Molecular Infection Biology

Computional methods for systems virology of herpes viruses

Herpesviruses are widely known as the causative agents of common cold sores but are also responsible for more severe diseases such as encephalitis or cancer and for developmental abnormalities upon congenital infection. Herpesviruses constitute a family of viruses employing various mechanisms to modulate their host cells and to escape their hosts' immune responses. To investigate these mechanisms, various parameters are measured quantitatively using system biology methods. The resulting big data sets must then be processed using bioinformatic methods to extract relevant information from raw data and interpret the results in the context of existing data.

In my PhD thesis, I will develop new computational and statistical methods to analyse these big data sets and implement them into tools. Furthermore, I will apply these new and other already established methods on data generated for Herpes simplex virus 1 and cytomegalovirus infection. Specifically, I will characterize and compare genetic elements of different herpesviruses and investigate changes on regulation of host genes during infection to elucidate mechanisms of virus-host-interactions. Finally, I will develop a database to make the obtained data sets available for the research community and to allow for integrative analyses of many high-throughput experiments in addition to publicly available data.