EASY SCIENCE CONFERENCE SERIES: Using the present to read the future: a dream or a nightmare?

Using the present to read the future: a dream or a nightmare?

Measuring, comparing, classifying and discovering. All modern experimental sciences rely on this simple combination. But any time we, scientists, change the way we measure things, we are also forced to change the way we think. New ideas often come from different research fields. We call this “interdisciplinarity. Neuroscience is a good example of this, where a lot of disciplines get together to solve puzzles and find answers.

At the same time, technology have reached a stage where almost everybody can afford to have a individuals-tracking device (from mice to humans), like your own smartphone. With these devices we can gather loads of data to the point of soon been able to model, analyze and compare behaviors like if they were simple phenotypes, like height and weight. The data produced by these devices can be compared to the amount produced in any genomics research.

Cedric Notredame is a senior group leader of the Comparative Bioinformatics Lab at the CRG. He will try to show how this can be turned in the most less invasive diagnostic tool mankind has ever had in its reach.