Even though it’s been more than two years and much has changed about the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers like Illinois Computer Science professor Mohammed El-Kebir (IGOH) continue to investigate the virus to ensure the medical and scientific community are better prepared to respond if something similar occurs in the future.

A recent paper from El-Kebir, investigates transcription regulatory sequences. The papers states TRSs play a critical role in discontinuous transcription in coronaviruses.

Artificial intelligence is often employed in the field of cancer genomics, where bits of DNA sequencing data must be identified and further analyzed with statistical, evolutional, and probabilistic models. “Off-the-shelf” computing tools are useful for many cancer researchers, but Mohammed El-Kebir (IGOH), Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) scientist, is taking these AI applications a step further.

A workgroup including Illinois Computer Science professors Mohammed El-Kebir (IGOH) and Jian Peng (CABBI), as co-principal investigators, produced a preprint research paper serving as the “first comprehensive analysis at a large scale that attempts to identify genomic signatures of SARS-CoV-2 strains that occur