Tyra Gwendolen Wolfsberg is an American bioinformatician. She is the associate director of the

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

and scientific programming core at the

National Human Genome Research Institute The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is an institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland. NHGRI began as the Office of Human Genome Research in The Office of the Director in 1988. This Office transi ...

Life

Wolfsberg received a A.B. in

molecular biology Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. She earned a Ph.D. in

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

and

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

from the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedic ...

. Her 1995 dissertation was titled ''Identification and characterization of ADAM, a novel gene family''. Wolfsberg transitioned to computationally based research by performing a

postdoctoral fellowship A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary academ ...

at the

National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The NCBI is lo ...

(NCBI) at NIH. She worked as a staff scientist at NCBI before joining the

(NHGRI) faculty in 2000. Wolfsberg is the associate director of NHGRI's

and scientific programming core. Her research program focuses on developing methodologies to integrate sequence, annotation, and experimentally generated data so that bench biologists can quickly and easily obtain results for their large-scale experiments. She has collaborated with NHGRI investigators on a variety of projects, from genomic characterizations of DNAse I hypersensitive sites and

retroviral A retrovirus is a type of virus that inserts a DNA copy of its RNA genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. After invading a host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase e ...

integration sites to the annotation of the genome of the ctenophore ''

Mnemiopsis leidyi ''Mnemiopsis leidyi'', the warty comb jelly or sea walnut, is a species of Tentaculata, tentaculate ctenophore (comb jelly). It is native to western Atlantic coastal waters, but has become established as an invasive species in European and wester ...

''. Her analysis of the ''Mnemiopsis'' genome helped to demonstrate that ctenophores are the oldest animal relatives of humans.

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Princeton University alumni University of California, San Francisco alumni National Institutes of Health people 21st-century American women scientists American bioinformaticians Women bioinformaticians 21st-century American biologists American medical researchers American women medical researchers {{Bioinformatics-stub