The innovation engine for new materials

Kayla Williams

Kayla Williams

Major: 

Environmental Engineering

University: 

Humboldt State University

Mentor(s): 

Ruoting Yang
Bernie J. Daigle, Jr

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Francis J. Doyle III

Faculty Sponsor's Department(s): 

Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

Project Title: 

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR PTSD BLOOD BIOMARKER IDENTIFICATION

Project Description: 

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostics is young in development and therefore a topic of recent interest. Identification of the genetic changes in whole blood present in a patient experiencing PTSD is the first step to developing prevention and treatment solutions. Creation of computer software that streamlines the identification process and improves the user interface is desirable to reach scientists with varying programming competency. This involves using R and Matlab programming environments in concert to produce software that takes raw PTSD patient data and generates a list of differentially expressed genes (DEGs), differentially expressed pathways (DEPs), and a visual representation of these expressions through the utilization of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in Matlab. This software will facilitate determination of DEGs for scientists, effectually aiding in development of a treatment for PTSD. Production of this software was completed successfully, allowing the user to import gene intensities and receive output with the three components: DEGs, DEPs, and a figure. Importantly, effective use of the software does not require programming knowledge. Furthermore, the software is unique in its ability to utilize the bioinformatics specialty of R and visualization power of Matlab in a single interface.  This study was thus successful in producing a useful software package that executes the biomarker identification process from start to finish, and can be used by scientists with no programming experience.