Insights from Systematically Analyzing Microbial Phenotypic Profiles

Following classical genetic approaches to understanding gene function, high-throughput phenotyping methods have emerged as a new way of studying gene functions, especially in microorganisms, which are highly amenable to high-throughput experimental design. As more high-throughput microbial phenotype data as well as the low-throughput data become available, systematically managing, displaying, and analyzing these data become a pivotal part in discovering unknown functions for genes. In this work, I have curated some datasets for high-throughput microbial phenotype data that contain genomic-scale phenotypes from E. coli tested under hundreds of conditions. Next, I conducted systematic and unbiased statistical analysis of these phenotype datasets and showed that the phenotypic profiles within these datasets are highly correlated with various functional annotations. The phenotype-function correlation has also been seen when a curated cell-cycle related phenotypic profile of S. cerevisiae is used with Gene Ontology annotations. Furthermore, I have displayed the preliminary results of using machine learning techniques to predict gene functions using high-throughput phenotype data of complete annotations, given more functional annotations as labels. Lastly, I describe a software package written in R that is potentially useful in analyzing high-throughput microbial phenotype data

The impact of the International Livestock Research Institute

Providing the first evidence-based global estimates of the many scientific, economic, policy, and capacity development impacts of livestock research in and for developing countries, this volume is an indispensable guide and reference for veterinarians, animal and forage scientists, and anyone working for the equitable and sustainable development of the world's poorer agricultural economies. Livestock is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors, with most growth occurring in developing countries. For more than four and a half decades one global centre has been mandated to conduct research on leveraging the benefits and mitigating the costs of livestock production in poor countries. This book focuses on the achievements, failures and impacts of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its predecessors, the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) and the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD). The scientific and economic impacts of tropical livestock research detailed in this work reveal valuable lessons for reducing world hunger, poverty and environmental degradation. Describing the impacts of smallholder livestock systems on the global environment, the book also covers animal genetics, production, health and disease control, and livestock-related land management, public policy and economics, all with useful pointers for future livestock-for-development research