Prof. Birte Kehr
Head of Research Group | Algorithmic Bioinformatics
Modern technologies such as DNA sequencing have revolutionized biomedical research by generating vast amounts of data. Understanding and interpreting these data requires skills in mathematics, statistics, computer science and programming. Professor Birte Kehr’s training as a bioinformatician enables her to bring this expertise to the field of biomedicine.
Professor Kehr specializes in the development of algorithms and software for analyzing large amounts of genome-sequence data. Her earlier research addressed the comparison of whole genomes from different species, while her more recent research has mostly focused on studying the human genome in a biomedical context. Here she has developed algorithms for detecting and genotyping genomic structural variation in population-scale data sets, she identified various genotype-disease associations, and she has contributed to basic research insights into human genome evolutionary processes.
Prof. Kehr’s mission at the LIT is to develop new algorithms for analyzing the latest types of sequence data as well as introducing recent genome analysis approaches to the field of immunotherapy research.
Examples of structural variants discovered with PopIns in Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) data from 15,219 Icelanders. Our software tool, PopIns, identifies types of genomic structural variants that involve a non-repetitive sequence not found in the reference genome. We call these variants ‘non-reference sequence variants’ (NRS variants). Using the variants discovered with PopIns, we were able to show that the majority of human non-reference sequence is ancestral, rather than newly inserted. We were also able to describe an NRS variant in the SREBF1 gene which is associated with myocardial infarction (Kehr et al, 2017, Nature Genetics).
Quote from Prof. Birte Kehr
With our newly developed algorithms and software tools, we analyze sequence data to gain fresh insights into human genetics and the immune system.
Head of Research Group Algorithmic Bioinformatics
Biography
Academic background and qualifications
Prof. Kehr received her Diploma in Bioinformatics at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena in 2008. From 2009–2013 she studied to be a Doctor of Natural Sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) at the Freie Universität Berlin and as a student of the International Max Planck Research School for Computational Biology & Scientific Computing (IMPRS-CBSC).
Professional career
From 2013–2016 Prof. Kehr worked as a Research Scientist at deCODE genetics/Amgen Inc. based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She went on to be a Junior Research Group Leader at the Berlin Institute of Health/Charité Berlin from 2016–2020. Since 2020 she has held a W2 professorship at the University of Regensburg.
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