ME Research UK blog post, 6 November 2016: New study – Genetic marker detection

Prof Brett Lidbury and colleagues at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University in Canberra are conducting an ongoing programme, funded by charities in Australia, which aims to find biomarkers for ME/CFS using a range of sources – bioinformatics, genetics and pathological testing.

ME Research UK has provided funding to the group to acquire additional genetic data using DNA pooling. It will then be possible to apply machine learning techniques and statistical analyses to an integrated data set combining genetic, clinical and pathological information.

As Prof Lidbury explained in a recent interview,

“We’re looking for patterns in the data which can help with biomarker pattern detection and provide clues to disease mechanisms. With complex diseases like this, we need to look at many factors simultaneously, and cross-disciplinary studies are necessary to integrate the findings from different avenues of research investigation.”

Read more at MER UK’s specific project page, Two dimensional sequencing and machine learning to maximise genetic marker detection