Staff profile

I have worked as a bioinformatician for 21 years and have 10 years of experience of analysing next generation sequencing data. I re-joined the Department of Biosciences in 2019. I manage the Bioinformatics Facility and teach BIOL40715: Bioinformatics and Data Science and BIOL50315: Bioinformatics. I supervise students working on DATA40345: Data Science Research Project and  BIOL4121: Research Skills MBiol.

• Analysis of next generation sequencing data
• Application of bioinformatics to biological research
• Application of bioinformatics to biomedical research

• 2000: Over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers:
• 2000: h-index 45:

Journal Article

• Alpizar-Sosa, E. A., Zimbres, F. M., Mantilla, B. S., Dickie, E. A., Wei, W., Burle-Caldas, G. A., Filipe, L. N., Van Bocxlaer, K., Price, H. P., Ibarra-Meneses, A. V., Beaudry, F., Fernandez-Prada, C., Whitfield, P. D., Barrett, M. P., & Denny, P. W. (2024). Evaluation of the Leishmania inositol phosphorylceramide synthase as a drug target using a chemical and genetic approach. ACS Infectious Diseases, 10(8), 2913–2928. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsinfecdis.4c00284
• Al-Ansari, M., Fitzsimons, T., Wei, W., Goldberg, M. W., Kunieda, T., & Quinlan, R. A. (2024). The major inducible small heat shock protein HSP20-3 in the tardigrade Ramazzottius varieornatus forms filament-like structures and is an active chaperone. Cell Stress and Chaperones, 29(1), 51-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstres.2023.12.001
• Perry, T. A., Masand, N., Vrzalikova, K., Pugh, M., Wei, W., Hollows, R., Bouchalova, K., Nohtani, M., Fennell, E., Bouchal, J., Kearns, P., & Murray, P. G. (2024). The Oncogenic Lipid Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Impedes the Phagocytosis of Tumor Cells by M1 Macrophages in Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. Cancers, 16(3), Article 574. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers16030574
• Allcock, B., Wei, W., Goncalves, K., Hoyle, H., Robert, A., Quelch-Cliffe, R., Hayward, A., Cooper, J., & Przyborski, S. (2023). Impact of the Physical Cellular Microenvironment on the Structure and Function of a Model Hepatocyte Cell Line for Drug Toxicity Applications. Cells, 12(19), Article 2408. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12192408
• Lakmes, A., Jhar, A., Penmetsa, R. V., Wei, W., Brennan, A. C., & Kahriman, A. (2023). Inheritance of seed weight and growth habit in 10 intercross chickpea (Cicer arietinum) nested association mapping populations. Plant Breeding, 142(1), 86-96. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbr.13065
• Kalesh, K., Wei, W., Mantilla, B., Roumeliotis, T., Choudhary, J., & Denny, P. (2022). Transcriptome-Wide Identification of Coding and Noncoding RNA-Binding Proteins Defines the Comprehensive RNA Interactome of Leishmania mexicana. Microbiology Spectrum, 10(1), e02422-21. https://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.02422-21
• Alpizer-Sosa, E., Ithnin, N., Wei, W., Pountain, A., Weidt, A., Donachie, A., Ritchie, R., Dickie, E., Burchmore, R., Denny, P., & Barrett, M. (2022). Amphotericin B resistance in Leishmania mexicana: Alterations to sterol metabolism and oxidative stress response. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 16(9), Article e0010779. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010779
• Lakmes, A., Jhar, A., Penmetsa, R., Wei, W., Brennan, A., & Kahriman, A. (2022). The Quantitative Genetics of Flowering Traits in Wide Crosses of Chickpea. Agriculture, 12(4), Article 486. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12040486
• Larbalestier, H., Keatinge, M., Watson, L., White, E., Gowda, S., Wei, W., Koler, K., Semenova, S., Elkin, A., Rimmer, N., Sweeney, S., Mazzolini, J., Sieger, D., Hide, W., McDearmid, J., Panula, P., MacDonald, R., & Bandmann, O. (2022). GCH1 Deficiency Activates Brain Innate Immune Response and Impairs Tyrosine Hydroxylase Homeostasis. Journal of Neuroscience, 42(4), 702-716. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0653-21.2021
• Alpizar-Sosa, E., Kumordzi, Y., Wei, W., Whitfield, P., Barrett, M., & Denny, P. (2022). Genome deletions to overcome the directed loss of gene function in Leishmania. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 12, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcimb.2022.988688
• An, H., Litscher, G., Watanabe, N., Wei, W., Hashimoto, T., Iwatsubo, T., Buchman, V. L., & Shelkovnikova, T. A. (2022). ALS-linked cytoplasmic FUS assemblies are compositionally different from physiological stress granules and sequester hnRNPA3, a novel modifier of FUS toxicity. Neurobiology of Disease, 162, Article 105585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2021.105585
• Mina, J. G., Charlton, R. L., Alpizar-Sosa, E., Escrivani, D. O., Brown, C., Alqaisi, A., Borsodi, M. P. G., Figueiredo, C. P., de Lima, E. V., Dickie, E. A., Wei, W., Coutinho-Silva, R., Merritt, A., Smith, T. K., Barrett, M. P., Rossi-Bergmann, B., Denny, P. W., & Steel, P. G. (2021). Antileishmanial Chemotherapy through Clemastine Fumarate Mediated Inhibition of the Leishmania Inositol Phosphorylceramide Synthase. ACS Infectious Diseases, 7(1), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsinfecdis.0c00546
• Wan, Y.-W., Al-Ouran, R., Mangleburg, C. G., Perumal, T. M., Lee, T. V., Allison, K., Swarup, V., Funk, C. C., Gaiteri, C., Allen, M., Wang, M., Neuner, S. M., Kaczorowski, C. C., Philip, V. M., Howell, G. R., Martini-Stoica, H., Zheng, H., Mei, H., Zhong, X., Kim, J. W., …Logsdon, B. A. (2020). Meta-Analysis of the Alzheimer’s Disease Human Brain Transcriptome and Functional Dissection in Mouse Models. Cell Reports, 32(2), Article 107908. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107908
• Elmetwali, T., Salman, A., Wei, W., Hussain, S. A., Young, L. S., & Palmer, D. H. (2020). CD40L membrane retention enhances the immunostimulatory effects of CD40 ligation. Scientific Reports, 10(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-57293-y
• Kukharsky, M. S., Ninkina, N. N., An, H., Telezhkin, V., Wei, W., Meritens, C. R. D., Cooper-Knock, J., Nakagawa, S., Hirose, T., Buchman, V. L., & Shelkovnikova, T. A. (2020). Long non-coding RNA Neat1 regulates adaptive behavioural response to stress in mice. Translational Psychiatry, 10(1), Article 171. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-020-0854-2
• Gu, X., Brennan, A., Wei, W., Guo, G., & Lindsey, K. (2020). Vesicle transport in plants: A revised phylogeny of SNARE proteins. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 16, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/1176934320956575
• Granai, M., Mundo, L., Akarca, A. U., Siciliano, M. C., Rizvi, H., Mancini, V., Onyango, N., Nyagol, J., Abinya, N. O., Maha, I., Margielewska, S., Wei, W., Bibas, M., Piccaluga, P. P., Quintanilla-Martinez, L., Fend, F., Lazzi, S., Leoncini, L., & Marafioti, T. (2020). Immune landscape in Burkitt lymphoma reveals M2-macrophage polarization and correlation between PD-L1 expression and non-canonical EBV latency program. Infectious Agents and Cancer, 15(1), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13027-020-00292-w
• Lai, S. L., Tan, M. L., Hollows, R. J., Robinson, M., Ibrahim, M., Margielewska, S., Parkinson, E. K., Ramanathan, A., Zain, R. B., Mehanna, H., Spruce, R. J., Wei, W., Chung, I., Murray, P. G., Yap, L. F., & Paterson, I. C. (2019). Collagen Induces a More Proliferative, Migratory and Chemoresistant Phenotype in Head and Neck Cancer via DDR1. Cancers, 11(11), https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers11111766