Eye tissue contains many kinds of cells, making it difficult for researchers to tell which biological signals belong to which cells. A federally funded North Texas collaboration aims to make that sorting job easier.
UT Arlington announced October 8 that a four-year, $1.96 million National Eye Institute grant will support computational tools for eye-disease research. Xinlei (Sherry) Wang, a UTA statistics and data science professor, is working with assistant professor Lin Xu at Dallas-based UT Southwestern.
One planned tool will examine large genomic datasets to identify regulators associated with eye health and disease. Another will separate signals from different cell types within a tissue sample, helping researchers investigate a regulator’s behavior without repeating costly experiments for every candidate.
