Predoctoral Trainee

Stephen A. Stanhope Statistics Graduate Program Faculty Supervisor: Michael Newton Email: stanhope@stat.wisc.edu 262-1055

My research is concerned with the development of statistical methods for detecting gene and microRNA targeting relationships. I begin by demonstrating that a marginal comparison of gene and miRNA expression levels (a method used in many transfection studies of miRNA activity) fails to detect the majority of previously observed targeting relationships in two different observational microarray studies. To provide an alternative to this approach, I incorporate information specific to the biological pathway used by miRNAs for post-transcriptional gene silencing into a multivariate statistical model. This model lends itself to a construction of a formal hypothesis test for evaluating whether or not the data evidences a targeting relationship between a gene and miRNA, compensating for variation in the expression levels of related genes. I demonstrate in both of the microarray studies under analysis that this model detects substantially more of the known targeting relationships than does the marginal comparison of gene and miRNA expression levels that was originally considered.

I am currently extending this result in two directions. First, I am investigating the relationship between my statistical methods and bioinformatic approaches to miRNA target prediction based on sequence data, with a focus on identifying targeting relationships occuring in vivo. I am also working on incorporating additional information about transcriptional networks into my statistical models in order to place them even further into their biological context. Because of the recent attention to the role of miRNAs in organism development and disease, my study is of interest to both medical researchers as well as applied biostatisticians.

CV

2007 CV (.pdf format)

Publications

Search for publications by Stephen Stanhope (Pub Med)

Feedback, questions or accessibility issues.
Graduate Program  |  Postdoctorate Program  |  Short Term Research Program

File last modified: August 13, 2003
Copyright © 2003 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.