A Conversation with Columbia University's Andrea Califano

October 20, 2011

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We sat down with Andrea Califano, director of the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology and the Center for Multiscale Analysis of Genetic Networks, to discuss algorithm development at Columbia University's Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, the Califano "humid lab," and more.

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Alex Pearlman hopes his discoveries will affect the way prostate cancer patients are treated. With other researchers, he has developed a genomic copy-number alteration-based prognostic model to predict, at the earliest stage possible, the likelihood that a local prostate cancer will metastasize.

The model was featured in a recent issue of the Journal of Probability and Statistics, a paper that he calls the "culmination of 10 years of work" and the "methods paper" for what he hopes will soon be a clinical test. "The finish line is pretty clear," says Pearlman, who is at New York City's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "It is to develop a US Food and Drug Administration-approved kit to predict prostate cancer metastases and to alleviate men of needless surgeries and radiation treatment."
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Genomic architecture of adaptive color pattern divergence and convergence in Heliconius butterflies
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A group from the US, UK, and Colombia describes findings from a comparative genomics-based study on a form of adaptive variation in butterflies known as mimetic wing coloring. By sequencing co-mimicking Heliconius butterflies from two species and a handful of hybrid zones, researchers narrowed in on a color pattern-associated site near a gene already implicated in red color variation — an apparent regulatory region suspected of evolving by convergence in the two species distantly related species. "Using a combination of next-generation sequencing analyses, we have refined our understanding of the genetic architecture of wing pattern variation in Heliconius," they write, "and gained important insights into the evolution of novel adaptive phenotypes in natural populations."
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Hologic has appointed former Beckman Coulter head Scott Garrett to its board of directors, where he will serve on the corporate development committee.
Garrett currently is an operating partner with Water Street Healthcare Partners, a private equity firm. Garrett spent 10 years at Beckman Coulter, where he was chairman, president, and CEO.

Gina Costa is now senior director of genomic applications at Illumina. She joins Illumina from Life Technologies, where she was senior director of genetic analysis, working on development of the Ion Torrent and SOLiD sequencing technologies. She has also held positions at Agencourt Bioscience and Roche's 454 Life Sciences.

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A Conversation with Columbia University's Andrea Califano

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