European doctoral candidates visit DHML for bioinformatics training

The Department of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences recently welcomed five doctoral candidates from partner institutions across Europe for a two-month placement in the Systems Biology and Epigenetics research group led by Professor Thomas Sauter and Dr. Lasse Sinkonnen. The visiting researchers — Maria Siegle, Monika Migdatek, Mathew Choaji, Letizia Incampo and Elayne Neirynck — used their time in Luxembourg to develop their bioinformatics analysis skills.

During their stay, the group learned a range of computational methods commonly used in biomedical research, including differential gene expression and gene enrichment analyses of both bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing data. In the context of triple-negative breast cancer, these approaches enable the analysis of large-scale biological datasets—often referred to as “omics” data—and allow researchers to explore molecular alterations in an unbiased way. They also facilitate the integration of multiple public datasets, which can be used to validate and strengthen findings from researchers’ own experimental work.

Each participant selected a dataset in advance, either from their own research or from publicly available sources, and defined a specific research question to explore. After introductory sessions on the analytical methods and software tools, they worked on their individual projects, analysing their datasets and visualising the results using different types of plots.

The placement was a valuable opportunity for the doctoral candidates to strengthen their bioinformatics skills while benefiting from the collaborative environment of the research group. It also provided a chance for the participants to exchange ideas and experiences as members of the MSCA network NO-CANCER-NET.