Improving women’s health outcomes

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Project Description

We have shown repeatedly in humans and animal models that females are as tractable with statistics as males (actually, often more than). Yet female physiology remains inappropriately understudied. Help us refine algorithms, map changes like pregnancy and menopause, and explore diversity within as well as across traditional sex categories.

Diversity within physiological data

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Project Description

Algorithms tend to be one size fits all, where as people are similar or dissimilar in complex and unmapped ways. Help map differences in normal routines, as well as in illness and recovery trajectories. These might arise from known demographic information, co-morbid conditions (diabetes, pregnancy, etc.), or be represent different patterns in illness associated with unknown or latent variables.

Grace Yu

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First Name
Grace
Last Name
Yu
Student Status
Graduate Student
Email
yuy060@ucsd.edu
Major
Bioinformatics and Systems Biology with a Specialization in Biomedical Informatics
Completed Degrees

B.S., Computer Science, Case Western Reserve University, 2021

BISB Training Grant
No
Special Funding or Awards

2022-25 Trainee on National Library of Medicine (NLM) Training Grant Fellowship Program

RNA regulation of immunity

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Project Description

RNA epigenetics or epitranscriptomics is an emerging field focused on chemical modifications in RNA. We are interested in understanding how RNA modifications affect the immune system during viral infections, vaccine development, immunotherapy, and in cancer. We employ in vivo models as well as non-human primates and human tissues to investigate genetics and epigenetics mechanisms of multiple disease states. Single-cell studies and data analyses are being performed to generate a single cell transcriptome and epigenome atlas of human brain regions such as prefrontal cortex, striatum, and hippocampus. Commonly used methods in the laboratory include large scale functional perturbation studies using RNAi and CRISPR, Simultaneous single-cell RNA sequencing and single-cell Assay for Transposase- Accessible Chromatin sequencing (scMultiome-seq), patient-specific stem cell derived brain and lung organoids, drug design and pharmacology, and analyses of immune cells’ functions.