The goals of the Data Analysis Core (DAC) are to provide cutting-edge analytical techniques to Coreinvestigators, to supply centralized data management methods to meld new experimental data with existingand evolving genetic and clinical information, to promote and facilitate the research undertaken by theCenter Investigators in the Oklahoma Rheumatic Disease Research Core Center (ORDRCC), and to provideeducational and technical support for the development of analytical capabilities at all levels of the ORDCC,spanning from established investigators to junior investigators and including post-doctoral candidates,students and select technical personnel. As potential collaborators for all research projects and keymandatory resources for all funded feasibility projects, the DAC will be an integral part of the research teamin study development and methodology selection, as well as providing ongoing statistical and analyticaladvice for each individual project. Centralized analysis through the DAC will enable the development ofstandard operating procedures for data handling such as the standardization of statistical diagnostic checksof distributional assumptions, outliers (overly influential data points), to name a few. This will ensure that allanalyses are of the same high quality and rigor. The DAC provides more efficient management of the datashared between projects, better quality control of both data and analysis, improved transfer of data betweenCores and projects, and standardization of data and analysis presentation. The specific functions of the DACwill include providing state of the art analysis capabilities for data from SNP arrays, gene expression, geneticlinkage, genetic association studies and longitudinal data collections; providing experimental design adviceand training to Center Investigators (and to OMRF); assisting, advising, and implementing high quality datamanagement within laboratories; developing key new analytic methods for evolving data; and providing highlevel informatics and programming capabilities to Junior Investigators. Services offered by the DAC:consultation on experimental design including power analysis; genetics data analysis including linkage andassociation approaches, which further subdivide to include fine mapping methods, family-based associationand haplotype-based methods, case-control candidate gene methods and multi-locus methods; geneexpression analysis from microarray experiments including normalization of microarray data, analysis ofdifferentially expressed genes, analysis of alterations in gene functional association using various clusteringmethods, identifying genes associated with biochemical pathways of interest and creation of transcriptionbased gene networks, selection of genes with discriminatory capabilities for disease in genetic data analysisand basic statistical analysis. High quality data analysis provided by the DAC is essential for meaningfulinterpretation of results from proposed projects and for the planned collaborative interdisciplinary research.
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