Chair: Prof Christopher Yau, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Manchester

Extending UKBiobank's reach into the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA)

Speaker – Emma Drummond, Lancaster University

Emma Drummond has developed a novel interpolation route which links microarray data to open-source libraries of full mtDNA sequence. Mitochondria are the cell organelle relied upon to provide ATP for all eukaryotic cells, which they must do efficiently and responsively.

The UKBiobank has collected a volume of data which enables an exploration of the human mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) for variants influencing mitochondrial performance. However, the density of the genetic data requires imputation, interpolating from known data points. Current methods fail to fully exploit what is known about the mtDNA and its inheritance pattern, which Drummond has improved upon.