ISB News

Former Undergrad Intern Publishes Algorithm in PLOS Computational Biology

William Poole, 2013 undergrad intern

Posted March 1, 2017

In a study published in PLoS Computational Biology, researchers at Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) have developed a multiscale mutation clustering algorithm (M2C) that identifies variable length regions with high mutation density in cancer genes. The M2C algorithm was developed by William Poole (first author on the paper), who started as a summer intern in 2013 as part of ISB’s Center for Systems Biology internship program. Working under the guidance of Dr. Brady Bernard and Dr. Theo Knijnenburg, both senior research scientists in the lab of Ilya Shmulevich at ISB, Poole’s initial summer internship led to a multi-year project that resulted not only in this PLoS Computational Biology publication, but also a Bioinformatics publication about combining dependent P-values. His work was presented at two international scientific conferences: the TCGA Scientific Symposium 2015 and The 15th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB 2016). Currently, Poole is pursuing a PhD at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California.

READ FULL SUMMARY OF PAPER

Recent Articles

  • Timing is Everything: ISB Study Finds Link Between Bowel Movement Frequency and Overall Health

    Everybody poops, but not every day. An ISB-led research team examined the clinical, lifestyle, and multi-omic data of more than 1,400 healthy adults. How often people poop, they found, can have a large influence on one’s physiology and health.

  • Wei Wei, PhD

    Dr. Wei Wei Promoted to Associate Professor

    Wei Wei, PhD – an accomplished cancer researcher with expertise in biotechnology and cancer systems biology – has been promoted to ISB associate professor. The Wei Lab focuses on understanding how cancer cells adapt to therapeutic treatment to foster therapy resistance by coordinating their internal molecular machinery and how these adaptive changes evolve within diverse tumors influenced by the tumor microenvironment. 

  • Drs. Nitin Baliga and James Park

    How Glioblastoma Resists Treatment – and Ways to Prevent It

    Glioblastoma is one of the deadliest and most aggressive forms of primary brain cancer in adults and is known for its ability to resist treatment and to recur. ISB researchers have made breakthrough discoveries in understanding the mechanisms behind acquired resistance, focusing on a rare and stubborn group of cells within tumors called glioma stem-like cells.