Núria López-Bigas is a Spanish biologist and research professor with expertise in medical genetics, computational biology, and bioinformatics.
Abstract of the talk :
Somatic mutations are the driving force of cancer genome evolution. The rate of somatic mutations appears to be greatly variable across the genome due to variations in chromatin organization, DNA accessibility and replication timing. I will discuss recent findings from our lab on how DNA-binding proteins, nucleosomes and differences in exons and introns influence mutation rate at local scale. These findings have important implications for our understanding of mutational and DNA repair processes and in the identification of cancer driver mutations. Given the evolutionary principles of cancer, one effective way to identify genomic elements involved in cancer is by tracing the signals left by the positive selection of driver mutations across tumours. We analyze thousands of tumor genomes to identify driver mutations in coding and non-coding regions of the genome.
To meet with Dr. Lopez Bigas during the day, please do register the following doodle