Event date:
Feb 9 2021 6:00 pm

Transcriptomics for personalized medicine

Speaker(s)
Prof. Greg Gibson
Venue
Zoom/Online
Abstract
Transcriptomics is the study of gene expression. It has enormous potential to understand the molecular basis of disease and to help guide therapeutic interventions. These days, RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) can be used to profile gene expression in thousands of individual cells, allowing researchers to characterize which cell types are modified in patients destined to progress to complicated disease. By combining transcriptomics with genome-wide association studies (TWAS), we can identify causal genes that are involved in pathogenesis. He discusses recent findings from my group in relation to inflammatory bowel disease, a chronic disease of the gut which is increasing in prevalence all over the world. Specific genetic signatures predict disease progression, including the need for colectomy, and might be used to guide medication usage to those in most need or most likely to respond. He also describes a new approach to studying how polygenic risk interacts with environmental exposures to influence risk of complicated disease.

Join us live with Prof. Greg Gibson from Georgia Institute of Technology where he directs the Center for Integrative Genomics (CIG). Prof. Gibson has helped bring the tools of genomic research to Drosophila (fruitfly) quantitative and evolutionary genetics. Since 2009 at Georgia Tech, his focus is human genomics with interests in predictive health, transcriptomics, and genotype-by-environment interactions in disease.

Biography:

Greg Gibson is Patton Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he directs the Center for Integrative Genomics (CIG). An Australian by birth, he attended the University of Sydney as an undergraduate, before pursuing his PhD in developmental genetics at the University of Basel in Switzerland. After Post-Doctoral training at Stanford University and Duke University, he was a David and Lucille Packard Fellow as an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan before moving to NC State University in North Carolina for 10 years. During that time, he helped bring the tools of genomic research to Drosophila (fruitfly) quantitative and evolutionary genetics. He moved to Georgia Tech in 2009 where he switched his focus to human genomics with interests in predictive health, transcriptomics, and genotype-by-environment interactions in disease. Dr Gibson has written two textbooks (Primers of Genome Science and of Human Genetics), and a trade book, It Takes a Genome.  He is a senior editor at Molecular Biology of Evolution, and maintains a monthly blog on genetics, Genome's Take.