Centennial Lab for Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics

The dominant strain of the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), which infects the Egyptian population, is HCV Genotype 4 (HCV-4). However, there are two groups of HCV patients in the Egyptian population: a group that responds to the current treatment and a group that relapses after the treatment. The hypothesis here is that there are genetic variations (differences) in the genome of HCV-4 between the two groups of patients, causing the difference in the response to the treatment. The goal of this project is to determine those genetic differences and to assess the association between the viral genetic variations and the patients’ response to the treatment.

Massive genetic sequences have been generated over the past few years from our expedition to the Red Sea and other extreme ecological systems. We aim to mine these data sets for novel enzymes of potential industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Under this theme, there are four projects:

Neonatal Sepsis

Sepsis is a form of extreme body response to an existing infection. The infection causes an overwhelming flux of immune chemicals that disrupt the internal body organs, causing a fatal condition known as septic shock. In the case of neonatal sepsis, infected newborns are born dead or die within 24 hours of birth. Although the global rate of neonatal sepsis has been declining globally, the rate has been rising in sub-Saharan Africa. It is hypothesized that the source of infection is the surroundings of the mothers or babies in hospitals. With collected blood samples from the babies and skin samples from the clinical staff, we aim to determine the relationship between the babies' blood infection and the staff's skin as a possible source of infection.