Cei obtained a BSc in Basic Biomedical Research and a PhD in Biochemical Sciences at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM). He did postdocs with Anton Enright at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the EMBL-EBI from 2006-2010. He then returned to Mexico to start his group on RNA Computational Genomics at Langebio, CINVESTAV.

Project summary

The project aims to implement and evaluate methods for predicting microRNA activity from gene expression profiles deposited in the EMBL-EBI ArrayExpress and Expression Atlas databases. Of particular interest are the single-cell RNA-Seq experiments deposited in the Single Cell Expression Atlas. In the future, these predictive methods can be used by the Gene Expression team to add value to the information they provide to the community.

Project outcomes and impact

During the short secondment, we showed that methods that were designed to predict microRNA activity using microarray data could be successfully implemented on large-scale transcriptomic studies, including single-cell RNA-Seq experiments. The nature of single-cell experiments, allows grouping individual cells by cell-type, and this improves the prediction of microRNA activity which is known to be highly cell-specific. This project will continue through a collaboration between our groups (Irene Papatheodorou and Cei Abreu-Goodger), and students interested to work in this area are encouraged to contact us.