Title（题目）：Development of analytic methods for genome-scale RNAi screens

Speaker（报告人）：Xiaohua Douglas Zhang, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Department of Biometrics Research

Merck Research Laboratories

Time（时间）：2011年3月24日（周四）下午3:30－4:30

Place（地点）：北京大学理科一号楼（数学科学学院）1114教室

Abstract（摘要）：RNA interference (RNAi) is a mechanism in living cells that helps determine what genes are active and how active they are. The development of algorithms for RNAi design that produce potent and selective knockdown of targeted genes has led to a great deal of interest in using RNAi to elucidate gene function, to identify novel targets for drug discovery, and to reveal the molecular biological system. The importance of RNAi was further recognized when the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was awarded to Drs. Fire and Mello in 2006 for their research in this field. The genome-scale RNAi study allows genome-wide loss-of-function screening. One of the major advantages of the genome-scale RNAi researches is their ability to simultaneously interrogate thousands of genes. With the ability of generating a large amount of data per experiment, the genome-scale RNAi researches have led to an explosion in the rate of data generated in recent years. Consequently, one of the most fundamental challenges in the genome-scale RNAi researches is to glean biological significance from mounds of data, which relies on the development and adoption of statistics/bioinformatics methods that are suitable for analyzing RNAi screens. Recently, we have been developing novel analytic methods specifically for quality control and hit selection in genome-scale RNAi screens. I will present these recently developed analytic methods and demonstrate how to use them in RNAi high-throughput screens.

About the speaker（报告人介绍）：Dr. Xiaohua Douglas Zhang is an Associate Director, Scientific Staff, in Merck Research Laboratories. He got his Ph.D. in statistics from Carnegie-Mellon University, PA, USA, an MS in Genetics and a BS in Biology from Beijing Normal University, China. He has worked on analyzing data generated from new biotechnologies. He has analyzed many high-throughput screening (HTS) projects for many years. Merck has put great effort into RNAi research. It purchased Sirna for $1.1 billion in 2006 and has one of the largest labs for conducting RNAi/compound HTS. Since early 2005, Dr. Zhang has led data analysis in RNAi HTS projects at Merck and has continuously developed and adopted experimental designs and analytic methods for HTS projects including novel analytic methods for quality controls and hit selection, which allows him and his colleagues to continuously publish papers in the HTS area. He has a book titled "Optimal High-Throughput Screening: Practical Experimental Design and Data Analysis for Genome-scale RNAi Research" published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. He has organized/chaired many sessions in professional meetings, has reviewed grant proposals for NIH and European Commission, and has refereed many manuscripts submitted to prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Methods, Journal of American Statistical Association, Bioinformatics, etc.