Gilad Lab, August 2024

Lab News

Wenhe Lin Receives Doctoral Diploma.

Wenhe participated in convocation this June, receiving his doctoral degree.  We had fun watching his hooding ceremony. He will be starting a position at Illumina.  We wish you all the best!

Geena Woo awarded F30 predoctoral fellowship.

Geena Woo was recently awarded a prestigious NIH predoctoral fellowship for her proposal entitled “Leveraging enhanced phenotyping and causal inference approaches to investigate the effect of maternal medication exposures on child outcomes”. Congratulations!

New Book on Functional Genomic Study Design from Yoav Available.  

Yoav just published a new book An Intuitive Primer on Effective Functional Genomics Study Design.  In this book, Yoav discusses the unique challenges facing the non-hypothesis-based, exploratory experimental design used in functional genomics, namely effectively addressing inherent confounding factors.  Written in a straightforward style, this book is an accessible and practical resource for both students and researchers interested in designing robust functional genomic studies.  

ASHG 2024

This November several members of the lab presented posters at the ASHG conference in Denver. Several posters from our group explored cellular responses to environmental perturbations in our iPSC-derived heterogenous differentiating cultures (HDCs). Wenhe Lin investigated the cell-type–specific and temporally dynamic responses of HDCs to nicotine, ethanol, and caffeine. Ben Umans examined the response of genetically distinct neural iPSCs to hyper- and hypoxic conditions. Geena Woo presented a poster on her on-going work identifying drug-induced response eQTLs in HDCs. Anna Cormack’s poster outlined developments in adapting our HDC system to generate cultures enriched in endodermal cells, which, when fully developed, will be an important tool for investigating endoderm-specific responses to perturbations. Hsin-Chiao Huang and Brandon Jamison also leveraged our HDC model, but to study comparative genomics and gene robustness, respectively.  Specifically Hsin-Chiao Huang leveraged the differences gene expression, chromatin accessibility, and transcription factor expression in human and chimpanzee HDCs to elucidate the molecular basis of human-chimpanzee divergence, while Brendan Jamison presented his work developing a method to study gene robustness by measuring intercellular gene expression noise in cardiac HDCs.

Welcome Brittany Hazzard, PhD

We are excited to welcome Brittany Hazzard, PhD to our lab as a new postdoctoral fellow.  Brittany received her bachelor’s in Pre-veterinary and Animal Biosciences from the University of Delaware in 2013. After taking a brief break to work with horses, she returned to school and received her master’s in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Towson University in 2018. She received her PhD in Molecular Medicine in 2023 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore with her dissertation work focusing on malaria parasite transcriptomics, specifically plasmodium vivax gene expression and alternative splicing.  We are happy to have her on our team!

Erik McIntire honored as American Society Clinical Pathology’s (ASCP) 40 Under Forty

The ASCP 40 Under Forty award recognizes young leaders who are making significant contributions in the fields of pathology and laboratory medicine. Erik received the recognition for his work as a cytogenetic technologist at WiCell characterizing PSCs, as well as the work he is doing in the Gilad lab. Listen to Erik describe his research here.   Five of the forty honorees will be selected to be featured as the 40 Under Forty Top Five.  You can find out more about the award, including a link to vote for Erik as a Top Five honoree, here. 

Wenhe Lin’s study on the cover of Cell Genomics

Wenhe’s paper Genetic regulatory effects in response to a high-cholesterol, high-fat diet in baboons has been published as a featured article in Cell Genomics and highlighted on the cover of the March 13, 2024 issue (Volume 4, Issue 3).  Well done, Wenhe!

Two new preprints available on BioRxiv

We are pleased to announce the availability of two new preprints detailing recent results from our group.  The first is a paper detailing Wenhe Lin’s work on genetic responses to a high fat, high cholesterol diet in baboons. The second details work led by Erik McIntire on the guided differentiation of cardiac iPSC models.  Congratulations to everyone involved.

Deji and Natalia publish review article on iPSC use in disease biology

Congratulations to Drs. Deji Adegunsoye and Natalia Gonzales for their recently published review in Annual Review of Genetics. The paper discusses the role of iPSC models in genetics and specific applications of the model designed to address challenges in studying musculoskeletal, pulmonary, neurologic, and cardiac phenotypes. The paper also discusses potential applications of iPSC-derived organoids in genetic studies.

Anna Cormack and Brendan Jamison join our lab

This fall we are welcoming two graduate students to our research group: Anna Cormack and Brendan Jamison.  Anna received her undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University and loves to read, rock climb, and dance ballet.  She is a student in the Human Genetics program.  Brendan joins us from NorthShore Research Institute, where he worked as a research associate.  He graduated from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is a student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology program. Brendan likes making pizza in his spare time. We are excited to have you both!

Paper published comparing the transcriptomes of human and chimpanzee embryoid bodies

Authors Kenneth Barr, Katie Rhodes, and Yoav Gilad published a paper in Genome Biology entitled: The relationship between regulatory changes in cis and trans and the evolution of gene expression in humans and chimpanzees.  This paper explores the regulatory differences between species that are due to cis and trans elements.

Erik McIntire receives F31 grant

Erik was granted the NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award to study “Single-Cell RNA Sequencing of Cardiac Organoids to Determine the Genetic Basis for Cell-Specific Responses to Anticancer Drugs.”  Congratulations!

Section of Genetics Retreat

Weekend of socializing and learning.

Geena Woo joins our lab

Welcome Geena! We are excited to have you as part of our team!  Geena is a student in the Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology program.  Check out her profile on our Lab Members page.

Wenhe Lin presents at Cold Spring Harbor

Wenhe presented a poster entitled “Dynamic complexity of genetic regulatory effects in response to a high cholesterol, high fat diet in baboons” at the Biology of Genomes meeting (May 9-13) and gave an oral presentation entitled “Tissue-specific and sex-based  genetic effects in response to a high cholesterol, high fat diet in baboons” at the Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling meeting (May 16-20).

Wenhe Lin  gives oral presentation at the 2023 Marjorie I. and Bernard A. Mitchell Conference on Human Genetics  (trainee symposium)

Erik McIntire offered predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association

Erik was offered a predoctoral fellowship award from the American Heart Association for a proposal aiming to characterize transcriptomic response of cardiomyocytes to chemotherapy drugs.

Wenhe Lin wins the Trainee Award/Best Poster Award at The University of Chicago Janet Rowley Research Day

Wenhe participated in the Janet Rowley Research Day in March 2023 at The University of Chicago and won both the Trainee Award and Best Poster Award!  Congratulations!

Hsin-Chiao Huang becomes doctoral candidate

It’s official!  Congratulations to Hsin-Chiao for the successful completion of her qualifying exams!

Genevieve Housman departs for Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Genevieve finished her post-doc with the group in January and has taken a position as Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Viel Erfolg!

Wenhe Lin named a finalist for Charles J. Epstein Trainee Awards for Excellence in Human Genetics Research

Wenhe was named as one of nine finalists out of over 700 candidates. The award is given by the American Society for Human Genetics for outstanding trainee abstracts submitted to the annual ASHG conference.

Posters and talks given at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG)

Wenhe Lin and Erik McIntire traveled to Los Angeles to present their research at the annual national ASHG conference.

Wenhe gave a featured plenary talk entitled “Tissue-specific dynamic eQTLs in response to a high cholesterol, high fat diet in baboons.”  He was named a finalist for the Charles J. Epstein Trainee award for this presentation.

Erik gave a poster entitled “Modeling cardiac cell developmental trajectories at high temporal resolution.”

Paper published in F1000 Research on gene expression in chondrocytes under biomechanical strain

We measured the differences in gene expression between iPSC-derived chondrocytes under strain and in control conditions.  We found differentially expressed genes relevant to joint health.  Authors: Anthony Hung, Genevieve Housman, Emilie Briscoe, Claudia Cuevas, and Yoav Gilad.   Read the paper here.