Dr Helen Cumming

Post Doctoral Bioinformatician
Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases
Hudson Institute of Medical Research

helen.cumming@hudson.org.au

Research Activities

After comleting a Post Doc in Molecular Biology I saw a need for better and more accessible analytical tools for biologists. Therefore I re-trained as a bioinformatician.

I am now working on designing and devloping intuitive and easy to use software tools for Biologists, to enable them to perform deeper and more comprehensive analysis of their data.

I have been involved in developing the Interferome searchable database of Interferon inducible genes. This program allows users to determine whether their list of genes contains interferon induced genes. It also allows access to a vast amount of data on the expression an regulation of interferon induced genes in a multitude of cell types and disease models.

More recently I have been designing and developing the new Transcription Factor Binding Site identification program Enrich. Enrich allows the identification of over or under-represented Transcription Factor Binding Elements in the promoters/regulatory regions of co-expressed genes. It can also characterinse novel Binding Elements that better represent your system. The interface of Enrich is fully interactive, allowing quick on the spot refinement of analysis and the easy production of publication quality figures.

Techniques/Expertise

Bioinformatics: Knowledge and experience programing in Java, Java swing and Perl
Databse construction and interrrogation using SQL
Data analysis tools including promoter analysis, Gene ontology and Expression databases

Also a wide variety of molecular and cell culture techniques.

Collaborations

Bat immunology group CSIRO Geelong
Cancer microenvironment and immunology Parker lab, LaTrobe University
Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium, Monash University

Disease Models

Clostridium difficile
Breast Cancer

Other Lab Members

Ross Chapman
Jamie Geering

Other members with similar research interests

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Dr Tony Sadler

Centre for Cancer Research Hudson Institute of Medical Research SEE FULL PROFILE >

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Immunology Division Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research SEE FULL PROFILE >

Prof Alister Ward

School of Medicine Deakin University SEE FULL PROFILE >