Carroll-Wang Biology Research Group

Department of Statisticshttp://stat.tamu.edu/~carroll

Raymond Carroll,carroll@stat.tamu.edu

Naisyin Wang,nwang@stat.tamu.edu

What We Do

•Our Aim: Develop statistical methods for analysis of diet and cancer relationships, especially colon cancer

•Cell and molecular biology based studies

•Functional, computational, high-dimensional data analysis

Where Does the Nutrition Come In?

•We work with Drs. J. Lupton, N. Turner and R. Chapkin of Nutrition

•Generally, there are two diets:•One rich in Corn oil

•Other rich in Fish oil

•The Fish oil diet is protective for colon cancer: the data are striking

•Our goal is to answer why this is the case

About Me

•I grew up in Wichita Falls, Ph.D. from Purdue, 13 years at UNC, then here as head of department from 1987-90

•I have been working on nutrition and cancer for 15 years

•I continue work with NCI Researchers on Nutritional Epidemiology and A&M researchers on basic Biology

About Naisyin Wang

•From Taiwan, Ph.D. from Cornell in 1991

•Our 1st female Full professor

•Faculty Fellow

•Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association

•Associate editor of multiple scientific journals

•Has worked with me since her arrival here

Some Statistics

•Basic Research Grants•We each are P.I.’s on National Cancer

Institute grants

•Bioinformatics Training Grant•P.I. and primary co-investigator

•NIH Center for Environmental and Rural Health•P.I. of Biostatistics Core

•Impact on Nutrition and Colon Cancer Research•Biostatisticians on multiple grants

Our Graduate Students

Gosia Leyk, Oxidative Damage

Tanya Apanasovich,Aberrant Crypt Foci

Zonghui Hu, DNA adducts

Christie Spinka,Genetic Epidemiology

Veera Baladandayuthapani,Gene interactions

Architecture of Colon Crypts

• Stem Cells:– Mother cells near

bottom

• Depth in crypt ~ age of cells– Suggests

importance of depth

– We see these location effects in all our work: statistically interesting

crypts

Lumen

Analysis of DNA Repair in Colonic Crypts

This work (with Marina Vannucci) has won two honors

Editor’s Invited paper, 2003, JASA (the major journal in the field)

Mitchell Prize for Bayesian methodology

The first development of wavelets in hierarchical functional data

Other Current Hierarchical, Funcational Data Projects

Flare Image Analysis forOxidative damage

Aberrant Crypt Foci: Spatial clustering

Multiple biomarkers per cell, and spatial clustering

The Bioinformatics Training Program

•Naisyin and I realized in 1999 that few statisticians knew anything about basic molecular biology

•The communication difficulties are real: how many non-statisticians know the buzzword Functional Data Analysis?

•How many statisticians know about Apoptosis (programmed cell death)?

The Bioinformatics Training Program

•We enlisted help from colleagues in •Nutrition

•Electrical engineering

•Toxicology

•Biochemistry

•We obtained an NCI grant

•We recruit: •Statisticians

•Electrical engineers

Current Trainees

Mahlet Tadesse, Harvard, Microarrays (M. Vannucci)

Wenjiang Fu, Michigan State,Microarrays for DNA expression(Tai Hsing)

Kimberley Drews, Texas Tech, Cell gene expression profiles (RJC)

Ivan Ivanov, Central Florida,Gene regulatory networks (E. Dougherty)

The Bioinformatics Training Program

•The program consists of •Coursework in biology, nutrition and

genetics

•Mentoring in life sciences labs•Kimberley Drews (Joanne Lupton,

Nutrition)

•Mahlet Tadesse (Ken Ramos, Toxicology)

•Ivan Ivanov (Jerry Tsai, Biochemistry)

•Wenjiang Fu (Guoyao Wu, Nutrition)

The Bioinformatics Training Program

•Two trainees have finished the program•Danh Nguyen, now in the

Bioinformatics Research Group at UC-Davis

•Aniruddha Datta, now in Electrical Engineering at TAMU

•In addition, there are 7 graduate students that were partially supported by the VPR office•They also do the training, courses, etc.

The Bioinformatics Training Program

•You will next hear from one of the postdoctoral trainees, Dr. Mahlet Tadesse, and her statistical mentor, Associate Professor Marina Vannucci

•They will describe how the training program works and their joint research that has resulted from it.