MBS/Oden Institute Joint Seminar - "Integrative models of 3D nuclear DNA organization"

The Molecular Biosciences Department and the Oden Institute welcome Dr. Anupama Jha for an MBS Seminar. 

Dr. Jha is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, advised by Professor William Stafford Noble. Dr. Jha obtained her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Professor Yoseph Barash. Her research interests include developing interpretable models for different steps of gene regulation, including 3D genome architecture, gene expression and alternative splicing using large-scale machine learning methods.

Dr. Jha's seminar, “Integrative models of 3D nuclear DNA organization” will be held on Tuesday, January 21 at 12:00 PM via zoom, password pob.

Abstract

My long-term research goal is to study how DNA sequence variations influence the 3D genome organization in humans and across mammalian evolution, how variations in genome organization impact transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation across human tissues, and how this regulatory infrastructure is mis regulated in cancer. In this talk, I will cover previous work constructing sequence-to-function models for different steps of gene regulation, including 3D genome architecture, gene expression and alternative splicing. We identified several regulatory elements implicated in gene regulation by interpreting these models using existing and novel techniques. These include transcription factors and G-quadruplexes implicated in trans-contacts and RNA-binding proteins implicated in tissue-specific alternative splicing. Furthermore, we leveraged interpretable machine-learning techniques to find typical transcriptomic signatures of solid tumors in the form of shared protein-coding genes, lncRNAs and splice junctions. I will outline my vision for developing novel computational methods for large-scale multi-omics data analysis.  These methods can potentially yield actionable insights into cell-specific gene regulation in heterogeneous healthy and diseased individuals.

Click here to learn more about Dr. Jha's research.