A. Goesmann, Justus Liebig Universität Gießen
Service center: Bielefeld-Giessen Resource Center for Microbial Bioinformatics – BiGi
Acute infections of the lower respiratory tract represent an increasing problem of the public health worldwide and mortality rates remained unchanged over the past 50 years. Antiviral treatments are currently only available for influenza virus (IV) infection, but they are of very limited efficacy and bear the risk of rapid acquisition of viral resistance. Emergence of novel respiratory viruses such as pH1N1/2009 pandemic IV and highly pathogenic avian IV strains, or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and the recent outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 further highlight the need for a better understanding of the underlying pathobiology. Against this background, researcher of the KFO309 are dedicated to unraveling the mechanisms driving anti-viral host defense, to dissecting the cellular and molecular contributors to the tissue damage at the virus-host interface in the distal lung, and to defining pathways and mediators of organ regeneration in the context of viral infection.
Bioinformaticians at JLU in Giessen try to understand cell-specific gene regulatory events and their impact on cellular networks in infected lungs. They make use of high-throughput single cell RNA-Seq (scRNA-Seq) data to analyze the transcriptional states and identify specific cell types in murine lung organoids. In this context they provide ready-to-use bioinformatics software tools, databases and tailored workflows. Furthermore, a user-friendly web-accessible software platform (WASP) is being developed that conducts diverse analysis steps for scRNA-Seq data and visualization of the results. WASP can be used on a personal computer as well as in cloud-based environments, e.g. in the de.NBI-Giessen cloud. This ready-to-use pipeline developed for the evaluation of scRNA-Seq data in the context of virus-host-interactions can also be applied to analyze cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 vs uninfected cells.
For further information on KFO309 visit http://www.kfo309.de/
For info on WASP visit https://www.uni-giessen.de/fbz/fb08/Inst/bioinformatik/software/wasp
To access the de.NBI cloud visit de.NBI Cloud
