Erythropoiesis is the process of producing red blood cells. Better understanding of this process may lead to the ability of producing red blood cells in vitro, which can boost blood supply for medical purposes and reduce reliance on donors. This is the aim of the collaborative project, “erythropoiesis in health and disease” (2011-2015), funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The project, led by Professor David Roberts (Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford), is a collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, and Brunel London.
I was involved in the bioinformatic analysis of the numerous amounts of data generated by, or related to, the project. I contributed to the identification of the dynamics of distinct genetic programmes during the erythropoiesis process, which we published in BMC Genomics.
Publications:
Alison T. Merryweather-Clarke*, Alex J. Tipping*, Abigail A. Lamikanra*, Rui Fa*, Basel Abu-Jamous*, Hoi Pat Tsang, Lee Carpenter, Kathryn J. H. Robson, Asoke K. Nandi, David J. Roberts. “Distinct gene expression program dynamics during erythropoiesis from human induced pluripotent stem cells compared with adult and cord blood progenitors”. BMC Genomics, 2016, 17: 817. View online | Download PDF.
(* Contributed equally, i.e. shared first authors)
Project research meeting photo, Oxford, UK, 2012.
Dr Basel Abu-Jamous 