Academic Background

Lihua Julie Zhu obtained her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999, and her M.S. in Computer Science from DePaul University in Chicago in 2001.  Prior to joining the Program in Gene Function and Expression at UMMS, she was an Associate Director of the Bioinformatics Core at the Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

The purpose of our group is to provide bioinformatics support to the research community in PGFE.  Our areas of greatest interest include data integration and data mining of high-throughput experiments such as ChIP-seq, ChIP-chip and microarrays.  Working with PGFE researchers, we aim to develop and apply computational tools to analyze and integrate various data sources.  For example, we are currently engaged in projects to detect genomic regions where epigenetic events (such as methylation) occur, and to discover transcription factor binding sites/motifs, and correlate the presence of these sites/motifs with gene expression profiles, and developmental or disease stages.

Examples of the bioinformatics support we provide to PGFE researchers include:

• Collaborating on grant applications that require bioinformatics expertise
• Assisting in experimental design, and providing statistical analysis and interpretation of the analysis results
• Providing data integration and customized bioinformatics pipeline development
• Managing and mining datasets resulting from high-throughput experiments such as ChIP-seq, ChIP-chip and microarrays
• Developing customized database applications
• Offering bioinformatics training workshops