Speaker Dr Judith Zaugg will be at BioInfoSummer2015 discussing the theme of Translational Genomics, she sat down with us and answered a few of our questions relating to her field of work.
What do you think are the most interesting “big questions” in your field?
Most of the genetic variants that have been associated with complex traits and diseases lie in the non-coding part of the genome. Thus one of the biggest questions in my field is to understand the contribution of genetic variation in the non-coding part of the genome to the phenotypic differences – such as predisposition to develop a certain disease – observed between individuals. This is particularly interesting because it has both a basic research component and a strong medical impact to it: on the basic side, it will help us understand the general architecture and mechanisms of gene regulation and on the applied side, it will tell us about potential disease mechanisms.
Please tell us about your research interests and what you are currently working on.
Very generally, we are interested in understanding the molecular basis of complex traits and diseases. Our current research projects are targeted at understanding the variation of molecular phenotypes arising through genetic or environmental variation across healthy individuals and trying to link these to discover general mechanisms e.g. about how enhancers regulate genes, or how the three-dimensional architecture of the genome affects gene regulation. We are also tackling questions of how to integrate genome-scale data from multiple technologies, such as genomics and proteomics, to get a more comprehensive picture of what is going on in the cell. To answer these questions we are developing new computational tools that will also be available to the community.
Do you have favourite applications of your work and what is the impact of these applications?
I think our most recent paper, were we were able to link disease-associated SNPs to their potential target genes using activity of regulatory elements (i.e. histone modifications) as read-out will have a great impact in starting to understand some of the molecular mechanisms that are underlying these diseases.
Why did you chose this career?
I always enjoyed to follow my curiosity, playing with data to discover new things, thinking about potential models and mechanisms and coming up with new hypothesis and testing them. Since this was exactly the work that I saw my supervisors doing, I chose to follow their path and pursue a career in science.
Can you tell us about the highlight of your career so far?
I have recently started my group at EMBL Heidelberg and we have several projects that have the potential to become a real highlight. As a highlight so far I want to cite my postdoctoral work were we were able to show that epigenetic marks (i.e. histone modifications) that were supposed to be non-genetically inheritable do in fact have a very strong genetic basis.