During our inaugural MARC Bioinformatics boot camp, eight undergraduate researchers came together to devote a week of their summer research experience to scan the genome of SARS-CoV-2 , the virus that causes COVID-19. Through a collaboration with the Rutgers Office of Advanced Research Computing, MARC Fellows learned the bioinformatics tools necessary to explore genetic variations in the genome of SARS-CoV-2.

The group explored the hypotheses that greater spread of COVID would increase the rate of mutations and that the alpha and delta variants would share common mutations within the spike protein gene. We’re proud that they were able to learn the tools of the trade and explore these lines of research in such a short period of time. We also are excited how they apply these tools to their own lines of research on campus.

You can see their presentation slides and video on our Bioinformatics page!