Using sequencing to analyze exotic circulating nucleic acids in primates and transplantation immunity of a sea squirt
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- High throughput sequencing allows the accurate quantification of millions to billions of biomolecules at a time. I have looked to answer questions across a range of biological fields by building analysis pipelines for this data, utilizing high-performance computing infrastructure, and applying techniques from machine learning. In the last decade, studies of circulating nucleic acids in humans have yielded noninvasive tests of fetal chromosome abnormalities and signatures of rejection events in transplant recipients. Here I describe how circulating nucleic acids also have microbial and viral signatures which allow us to detect pathogens in a hypothesis-free manner, to identify highly divergent and novel microbes in humans, to characterize the microbiome of non-human primates, and to unveil disease dynamics and changes in the immune system in individuals living with HIV. Another area I've researched relates to the immune system of sea squirts, or tunicates, the sister group of vertebrates and are separated about 400 million years from us. The tunicate Botryllus schlosseri is a colonial organism with a natural allogeneic fusion reaction that produces chimeras, and therefore serves as a model system for transplantation. Here I used deep sequencing to present a molecular, genetic and cellular description of the process of resorption of unstable chimeras, characterization of the haematopoietic system, and molecular, cellular and morphological changes during development of this fascinating organism.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kowarsky, Mark Alec |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Quake, Stephen Ronald |
| Thesis advisor | Quake, Stephen Ronald |
| Thesis advisor | Chu, Steven |
| Thesis advisor | Weissman, Irving L |
| Degree committee member | Chu, Steven |
| Degree committee member | Weissman, Irving L |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Physics. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Mark Kowarsky. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Mark Alec Kowarsky
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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