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Joshua Ainsley
Our work at the Laboratory of Leon Reijmers, PhD, Tufts University Neuroscience Department focuses on changes in gene expression that occurs in neurons during learning and memory formation. To examine these events on a genome-wide scale, we use a technique called next generation sequencing which generates millions of "reads" of short nucleotide sequences. By sequencing the RNA that is present before and after a behavioral paradigm designed to induce learning in mice and then comparing the results, we can begin to understand some of the basic steps that occur in a live animal forming a memory. The cluster is essential for our research since figuring out where millions of short DNA sequences map on the mouse genome is a very computationally intensive process. Not only would the results take much longer to obtain on a single desktop, but we would be very limited in our ability to modify parameters of our analysis to see how that affects the results. What would take weeks or months take hours or days thanks to the resources provided by the Tufts cluster.
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Chao-Qiang Lai
Our Tufts/HNRC research is focusing on Nutrigenomics to study gene-diet interactions in the area of cardiovascular diseases, utilizing both genetic epidemiology approaches as well as controlled dietary intervention studies. This research involves the investigation of nutrient-gene interactions in large and diverse populations around the world with long-standing collaborations with investigators in Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States. For the current project, I was using the cluster to deal with a large amount of genome data, such as genetic variants in human genomes, which can not be handled with my laptop computer. The cluster is over 50X faster than my laptop. It would not be possible to complete my research project without it!
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