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Dr Sara Ballouz

Dr Sara Ballouz

Senior Lecturer

Education

2013 - PhD, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and the University of New South Wales, Sydney - Australia
2008 - BE Bioinformatics First Class Honours, University of New South Wales, Sydney – Australia
2008 - BSc Genetics, University of New South Wales, Sydney – Australia

Engineering
Computer Science and Engineering

My central scientific interest has been to understand the genetic architecture of disease. With data from the genome, transcriptome, epigenome and proteome increasing exponentially, robust tools and practices need to be established to analyse this deluge, in particular if to be applied to personalized medicine.

I obtained my PhD from the University of New South Wales and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in 2013, working with Drs Merridee Wouters and Bruno Gaeta. I then moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for my postdoctoral training with Dr Jesse Gillis. In 2020, I started my own group at the Garvan-Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

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E-mail
s.ballouz@unsw.edu.au
Location
Garvan
  • Book Chapters | 2011
    Oti M; Ballouz S; Wouters MA, 2011, 'Web tools for the prioritization of candidate disease genes', in , pp. 189 - 206,
  • Journal articles | 2024
    Phetsouphanh C; Jacka B; Ballouz S; Jackson KJL; Wilson DB; Manandhar B; Klemm V; Tan HX; Wheatley A; Aggarwal A; Akerman A; Milogiannakis V; Starr M; Cunningham P; Turville SG; Kent SJ; Byrne A; Brew BJ; Darley DR; Dore GJ; Kelleher AD; Matthews GV, 2024, 'Improvement of immune dysregulation in individuals with long COVID at 24-months following SARS-CoV-2 infection', Nature Communications, 15,
    Journal articles | 2023
    Ballouz S; Kawaguchi RK; Pena MT; Fischer S; Crow M; French L; Knight FM; Adams LB; Gillis J, 2023, 'The transcriptional legacy of developmental stochasticity', Nature Communications, 14,
    Journal articles | 2023
    Stavrou MR; So SS; Finch AM; Ballouz S; Smith NJ, 2023, 'Gene expression analyses of TAS1R taste receptors relevant to the treatment of cardiometabolic disease', Chemical Senses, 48,
    Journal articles | 2022
    Kaminow B; Ballouz S; Gillis J; Dobin A, 2022, 'Pan-human consensus genome significantly improves the accuracy of RNA-seq analyses', Genome Research, 32, pp. 738 - 750,
    Journal articles | 2022
    Werner JM; Ballouz S; Hover J; Gillis J, 2022, 'Variability of cross-tissue X-chromosome inactivation characterizes timing of human embryonic lineage specification events', Developmental Cell, 57, pp. 1995 - 2008.e5,
    Journal articles | 2021
    Ballouz S; Mangala MM; Perry MD; Heitmann S; Gillis JA; Hill AP; Vandenberg JI, 2021, 'Co-expression of calcium and hERG potassium channels reduces the incidence of proarrhythmic events', Cardiovascular Research, 117, pp. 2216 - 2227,
    Journal articles | 2021
    Lee J; Shah M; Ballouz S; Crow M; Gillis J, 2021, 'CoCoCoNet: Conserved and comparative co-expression across a diverse set of species', Nucleic Acids Research, 48, pp. W566 - W571,
    Journal articles | 2020
    Ballouz S, 2020, 'Single-Cell Transcriptomics', eLS,
    Journal articles | 2020
    Pang CNI; Ballouz S; Weissberger D; Thibaut LM; Hamey JJ; Gillis J; Wilkins MR; Hart-Smith G, 2020, 'Analytical Guidelines for co-fractionation Mass Spectrometry Obtained through Global Profiling of Gold Standard Saccharomyces cerevisiae Protein Complexes', Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, 19, pp. 1876 - 1895,
    Journal articles | 2019
    Ballouz S; Dobin A; Gillis JA, 2019, 'Is it time to change the reference genome?', Genome Biology, 20,
    Journal articles | 2019
    Crow M; Lim N; Ballouz S; Pavlidis P; Gillis J, 2019, 'Predictability of human differential gene expression', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116, pp. 6491 - 6500,
    Journal articles | 2018
    Ballouz S; Dobin A; Gingeras TR; Gillis J, 2018, 'The fractured landscape of RNA-seq alignment: The default in our STARs', Nucleic Acids Research, 46, pp. 5125 - 5138,
    Journal articles | 2018
    Crow M; Paul A; Ballouz S; Huang ZJ; Gillis J, 2018, 'Characterizing the replicability of cell types defined by single cell RNA-sequencing data using MetaNeighbor', Nature Communications, 9,
    Journal articles | 2017
    Ballouz S; Dörfel M; Crow M; Crain J; Faivre L; Keegan C; Kitsiou-Tzeli S; Tzetis M; Lyon G; Gillis J, 2017, 'Not by systems alone: replicability assessment of disease expression signals', ,
    Journal articles | 2017
    Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2017, 'Strength of functional signature correlates with effect size in autism', Genome Medicine, 9, pp. 64,
    Journal articles | 2017
    Ballouz S; Pavlidis P; Gillis J, 2017, 'Using predictive specificity to determine when gene set analysis is biologically meaningful', Nucleic acids research, 45, pp. e20 - e20,
    Journal articles | 2017
    Ballouz S; Weber M; Pavlidis P; Gillis J, 2017, 'EGAD: Ultra-fast functional analysis of gene networks', Bioinformatics, 33, pp. 612 - 614,
    Journal articles | 2016
    Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2016, 'AuPairWise: A Method to Estimate RNA-Seq Replicability through Co-expression', PLoS Computational Biology, 12, pp. e1004868,
    Journal articles | 2016
    Crow M; Paul A; Ballouz S; Huang ZJ; Gillis J, 2016, 'Exploiting single-cell expression to characterize co-expression replicability', Genome biology, 17, pp. 101,
    Journal articles | 2016
    O'Meara MJ; Ballouz S; Shoichet BK; Gillis JG, 2016, 'Ligand similarity complements sequence, physical interaction, and Co-Expression for gene function prediction', PLoS ONE, 11,
    Journal articles | 2016
    Verleyen W; Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2016, 'Positive and negative forms of replicability in gene network analysis', Bioinformatics, 32, pp. 1065 - 1073,
    Journal articles | 2015
    Ballouz S; Verleyen W; Gillis J, 2015, 'Guidance for RNA-seq co-expression network construction and analysis: Safety in numbers', Bioinformatics, 31, pp. 2123 - 2130,
    Journal articles | 2015
    Verleyen W; Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2015, 'Measuring the wisdom of the crowds in network-based gene function inference', Bioinformatics, 31, pp. 745 - 752,
    Journal articles | 2014
    Ballouz S; Liu JY; Oti M; Gaeta B; Fatkin D; Bahlo M; Wouters MA, 2014, 'Candidate disease gene prediction using : application to a genome-wide association study on coronary artery disease', Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine, 2, pp. 44 - 57,
    Journal articles | 2014
    Gillis J; Ballouz S; Pavlidis P, 2014, 'Bias tradeoffs in the creation and analysis of protein-protein interaction networks', Journal of Proteomics, 100, pp. 44 - 54,
    Journal articles | 2013
    Ballouz S; Liu JY; George RA; Bains N; Liu A; Oti M; Gaeta B; Fatkin D; Wouters MA, 2013, 'Gentrepid V2.0: A web server for candidate disease gene prediction', BMC Bioinformatics, 14, pp. 249,
  • Working Papers | 2019
    Ballouz S; Mangala M; Perry M; Heitmann S; Gillis J; Hill A; Vandenberg J, 2019, Co-expression of calcium channels and delayed rectifier potassium channels protects the heart from proarrhythmic events,
  • Preprints | 2023
    Phetsouphanh C; Jacka B; Ballouz S; Jackson KJL; Wilson D; Manandhar B; Klemm V; Tan H-X; Wheatley A; Aggarwal A; Akerman A; Milogiannakis V; Starr M; Cunningham P; Turville S; Kent S; Byrne A; Brew B; Darley D; Dore G; Kelleher A; Matthews G, 2023, Improvement of immune dysregulation and health-related quality of life in individuals with long COVID at 24-months following SARS-CoV-2 infection,
    Conference Papers | 2022
    Muzumdar S; Ballouz S; Lam F; Degrange M; Kreuzburg S; Chong H; Zerbe C; Jongco A; Gillis J, 2022, 'A granular view of X-linked chronic granulomatous disease exploiting single-cell transcriptomics', in JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, AMER ASSOC IMMUNOLOGISTS,
    Preprints | 2021
    Werner JM; Ballouz S; Hover J; Gillis J, 2021, Cross-tissue analysis of allelic X-chromosome inactivation ratios resolves features of human development, ,
    Preprints | 2020
    Kaminow B; Ballouz S; Gillis J; Dobin A, 2020, Virtue as the mean: Pan-human consensus genome significantly improves the accuracy of RNA-seq analyses, ,
    Preprints | 2020
    Lee J; Shah M; Ballouz S; Crow M; Gillis J, 2020, CoCoCoNet: Conserved and Comparative Co-expression Across a Diverse Set of Species,
    Preprints | 2019
    Ballouz S; Dobin A; Gillis J, 2019, Is it time to change the reference genome?, ,
    Preprints | 2017
    Crow M; Paul A; Ballouz S; Huang ZJ; Gillis J, 2017, Addressing the looming identity crisis in single cell RNA-seq, ,
    Preprints | 2016
    Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2016, AuPairWise: a method to estimate RNA-seq replicability through co-expression, ,
    Preprints | 2016
    Ballouz S; Gillis J, 2016, Strength of functional signature correlates with effect size in autism,
    Preprints | 2016
    Ballouz S; Pavlidis P; Gillis J, 2016, Using predictive specificity to determine when gene set analysis is biologically meaningful, ,
    Preprints | 2016
    Ballouz S; Weber M; Pavlidis P; Gillis J, 2016, EGAD: Ultra-fast functional analysis of gene networks, ,
    Conference Papers | 2014
    Grover MP; Ballouz S; Mohanasundaram KA; George RA; Goscinski A; Crowley TM; Sherman CDH; Wouters MA, 2014, 'Novel therapeutics for coronary artery disease from genome-wide association study data', in BMC Medical Genomics, Springer Nature, PEOPLES R CHINA, Qingdao, pp. s1, presented at 4th Annual Translational Bioinformatics Conference (TBC) / 8th International Conference on Systems Biology (ISB), PEOPLES R CHINA, Qingdao, 24 October 2014 - 27 October 2014,
    Conference Presentations | 2013
    Grover MP; Ballouz S; Mohanasundaram KA; George RA; H Sherman CD; Crowley TM; Wouters MA, 2013, 'Identification of novel therapeutics for complex diseases from genome-wide association data', presented at 3rd Annual Translational Bioinformatics Conference (TBC) / ISCB-Asia, SOUTH KOREA, Seoul, 02 October 2013 - 04 October 2013,
    Preprints |
    Lihm J; Ahrens S; Ballouz S; Lee H; Crow M; Tollkuhn J; McCarthy S; Li B; McCombie WR; Gillis J, How Low Can You Go? Calling Robust ATAC-Seq Peaks Through Read Down-Sampling, ,

• Transcriptomics (single-cell and bulk)

• Co-expression

• X-linked disorders

• Sex differences in disease

• Meta-analysis

• Personalized medicine

My Research Supervision

Lachlan Gray -ÌýeXamining the role of the X chromosome in female autoimmune disease