Core D: Bioinformatics and Modeling Core

Core Lead: Ivan Marazzi, PhD (University of California - Irvine)
Associate Core Lead: Matthew T. Weirauch, PhD (Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center)
Co-Investigator: Jeffrey R. Johnson, PhD (Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai)

Core D

The Bioinformatics and Modeling Core will facilitate centralized data collection, exchange and analysis, and provide expertise by the members of the Core encompassing genetics, viral infection, functional genomics, gene regulation, proteomics, modeling, and bioinformatics.

Ivan Marazzi

Dr. Marazzi uses a combination of genomics and bioinformatics approaches to characterize regulatory networks at play during viral infection and to understand how disruptions of these networks can lead to tip the balance of disease outcome. Over the course of his career, he has been active in several areas—including coding and non-coding RNA biology, mRNA splicing, epigenetics and regulatory interactions between transcription factors controlling many aspects of innate immunity, from viral infection to co-infection and sepsis models.

Marazzi Lab

Website: Marazzi Lab website


The Marazzi Laboratory (Laboratory of Cellular Response in Health and Disease) studies epigenetic and chromatin-mediated control of gene expression in the context of the cellular response to pathogens or differentiation. We are interested in mechanisms that control the cell’s response. We use biochemistry, genetics, and next generation sequencing techniques to understand molecular mechanisms and genome-wide effects of known and novel candidate genes.

Jeffrey Johnson

Dr. Johnson’s research program focuses on applying quantitative proteomics and bioinformatics approaches to investigate host–pathogen interactions. He has developed methodologies to quantify changes in protein abundance and post-translational modifications, and bioinformatics approaches to prioritize proteomics findings that are likely to have functional significance.

Johnson Lab

Website: Johnson Lab website
Lab Phone: (212) 241-5857 (x45857)

  • Dr. Jeffrey Johnson, (PI), Associate Professor
    Email: jeffrey.johnson@mssm.edu

  • Prithy Adhikary, Associate Researcher

  • Christina Higgins, Graduate Student Researcher

  • Andrew Kurland, Associate Researcher


The Johnson Lab studies how pathogens remodel their host environments.

We aim to discover the molecular mechanisms that pathogens use to takeover a host cell in order to identify weaknesses that can be translated into drug targets. We focus our investigations on how pathogens target host proteins, protein complexes, and pathways, and for this we rely heavily on mass spectrometry-based proteomics technologies. We combine proteomics findings with genetic and molecular biology approaches to generate new hypotheses and test them in the lab.

We also develop proteomics technologies and analysis tools to address the biological questions at hand, and in doing so we hope to make it easier for anyone to use proteomics to interpret their own biological system of interest.

Matthew Weirauch

Dr. Weirauch’s is a co-investigator on the Bioinformatics and Modeling Core, lending expertise in systems-level approaches to be applied in the study of pathogen–host interactions between Ebola virus and immune responses.

Out methods for the P01 are:

  • Develop new computational methods for predicting key regulatory molecules (transcription factors, RNA binding proteins, noncoding RNAs) in the host ebola response network​;
  • Oversee data processing for functional genomics datasets produced by this study​;
  • Serve as “data warehouse” for data produced by this study and relevant publicly available data​.

Weirauch Lab

Website: Weirauch Lab website

  • Dr. Matthew Weirauch, (PI), Associate Professor
    Email: maththew.weirauch@cchmc.org

  • Phillip Dexheimer, PhD Student

  • Kevin Ernst, Data Plumber

  • Dr. Sreeja Parameswaran, Research Associate


Vision:​ Harness the power of human & viral genomics to improve human health​.
Strategy: ​ Discover human & viral gene regulation mechanisms in disease​.
Goal: ​A thorough understanding of human & viral transcription factor mechanisms in disease​.
Strategies:​​  Mechanistic understanding of gene regulation​; Use all available data​; Develop general, but disease-focused systems​.
Tactics:​​ Build knowledgebases​; Build computational infrastructure​; Develop new algorithms​; Collaborate with domain & disease experts.​