School of Fundamental Sciences<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s biologists are flooded with data which, with automation of many laboratory processes, is being produced at an ever- increasing pace. With so much information to sift through, how can researchers make sense of this \u2018big data\u2019? As a computational biologist, Professor Murray Cox from the School of Fundamental Sciences works to develop the mathematics, statistics and models to allow sense to be made of this wealth of information. \u2018Filtering is a really good term for what I do,\u2019 he said. \u2018Researchers make a lot of big data, but when what we want to know is a really small component of that, how do we pull it out? That\u2019s where computational biology comes in.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Cox works in several areas, one of which is human population genetics, particularly in the Pacific region, with a growing focus on M\u0101ori genomics. \u2018Island Southeast Asia is a particularly important but incredibly understudied area because the people in those regions are the ancestors of modern M\u0101ori,\u2019 he says. \u2018If you take Indonesia for instance, it\u2019s the fourth largest country in the world but we\u2019ve been publishing the first genome sequences.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Past research of this type has focused on only one or a few genes, but now that entire genomes are being sequenced, a wealth of new information is available. \u2018We can begin to look at things like archaic ancestries in our DNA,\u2019 said Professor Cox. \u2018Everyone has heard of Neanderthals, but very recently we have discovered other groups around the world.\u2019 One such ancestor, discovered less than a decade ago, is the Denisovans, who can be thought of as a sister group to Neanderthals. Very few archaeological remains exist, most of which have been found in Siberia, but the genetic lineages are widespread. \u2018If you look at individuals who have the most Denisovan ancestry in them today, it\u2019s the Papuan groups,\u2019 said Professor Cox, \u2018meaning that there were Denisovans living within the Pacific who have contributed to modern Pacific populations.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although these historical discoveries are interesting in themselves, even more can be discovered from this information. Professor Cox and colleagues have found that a particular variant of a gene present in modern Pacific people with certain autoimmune disorders can be traced back to the Denisovans. This has resulted in new medical treatments for these individuals, because it is now understood how these disorders came about. This, says Professor Cox, is living history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Another area that Professor Cox is interested in is inferring social information from genetics. \u2018For instance, many non-Western communities had really strict and complex marriage rules. I developed ways to look at the genetics and reconstruct those past marriage rules using genetic patterns in various communities from today. That\u2019s an example of where there were no longer records going that far back, but there was still a signal in the genetic record.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Cox is also involved in non-genetic research, looking at whakatauk\u012b, or traditional sayings, that are used widely in te reo. \u2018People probably don\u2019t realise quite how much information is held in M\u0101ori oral traditions,\u2019 says Professor Cox. \u2018I provide the computational statistics to understand the key themes of whakatauk\u012b, but with the M\u0101ori world view and cultural background information, the process gets a real depth and richness.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specifically, Professor Cox is looking at whakatauk\u012b about the environment, to learn how M\u0101ori responded to environmental change. \u2018Scientists can look at climate change back in the past,\u2019 he said, \u2018but what they can\u2019t get is how people changed in response. That\u2019s all recorded in oral history, which brings a real human dimension to all these studies of the past in Aotearoa. For instance, we looked at whakatauk\u012b that refer to moa, such as how they lived and their extinction, which obviously resonated strongly through M\u0101ori society. But one of the things our research has also done is to show the absences. The whakatauk\u012b about moa show that they were a very important part of the culture. But there are other birds that we know from archaeology were heavily used, like giant geese, and they don\u2019t occur in the whakatauk\u012b \u2014 they\u2019re an absence. This illustrates that there were certain keystone or seminal species that were really important in the culture, that were then remembered, and ones that weren\u2019t. So that gives you a bit of an insight into how people responded to and lived through that kind of extinction event. You\u2019ll never get that information any other way \u2014 you can\u2019t get it by digging up bones, or looking at pollen cores or anything else.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PROFESSOR MURRAY COX School of Fundamental Sciences Today\u2019s biologists are flooded with data which, with automation of many laboratory processes, is being produced at an ever- increasing pace. With so much information to sift through, how can researchers make sense of this \u2018big data\u2019? As a computational biologist, Professor Murray Cox from the School of … Continue reading Filtering through our biological past<\/span>