Bioscience: USRA Leads Peer-Reviewed Publication Describing NASA GeneLab
November 2020
Dr. Daniel C. Berrios, Ph.D, Senior Scientist (USRA), authored a peer reviewed paper, which reviews the various components of the GeneLab platform, including the new data repository web interface, and the GeneLab Online Data Entry (GEODE) web portal. This will support the expansion of the database in the future to include companion non-omics assay data. The paper discusses the design for GEODE, particularly how it promotes investigators providing more accurate metadata, reducing the curation effort required of GeneLab staff. It also introduces a new GeneLab Application Programming Interface (API) specifically designed to support tools for the visualization of processed omics data. In addition, this paper reviews the outreach efforts by GeneLab to utilize the spaceflight data in the repository to generate novel discoveries and develop new hypotheses, including spearheading data analysis working groups, and a high school student training program. All these efforts are aimed ultimately at supporting precision risk management for human space exploration.
Publication Impact
GeneLab plans to utilize machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to maximize the usage of its data, especially in the context of modelling and extrapolation to human risks. Such effort may start by providing a portal proposing mechanistic models describing known health risks (cancer, muscle atrophy, bone loss, etc.). Such a tool would allow users to test how well GeneLab omics data and data from other databases support these models and test alternative models. These approaches will involve collaborating with the NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive that archives biospecimens and non-omics data from mammalian and microbial NASA experiments.
"Interfaces for the exploration of space omics data, Nucleic Acids Research", Nucleic Acids Research
Authors: Daniel C Berrios, Ph.D., Senior Scientist (USRA), Jonathan Galazka, Ph.D. (NASA), Kirill Grigorev (USRA/Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University), Samrawit Gebre (KBR), Sylvain V. Costes, Ph.D. (NASA).
