We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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March 11, 2015

Speaker: Dr. Peter Rogan, Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Genome Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Department of Computer Science, Western University.

Title: Mutation Forecaster, a Software Resource for Genome-Scale Analysis of Complete Genes and Human Genomes

Abstract: Complete genome sequencing is now feasible, becoming a cost-effective and increasingly essential component of cancer discovery and patient genomic analyses. This has created a bottleneck in interpretation of gene variants, partly because the effects of most variants remain unknown (variants of unknown significance, or VUS). In addition, interpretation is confounded by the lack of corresponding genetic information from closely related family members.

The VUS problem is now exacerbated by the discovery of massive numbers of variants in each genome, many never before seen. Technologies that prune variants in an individual are essential to perform any large-scale gene panel, exome or genome analysis. The variant analysis approaches I will describe improve complete gene and genome sequence analyses by detecting dysregulated biochemical pathways. We stratify variants by mutation severity, which can suggest or exclude particular therapeutic options.