Some of the members of the Norden-Krichmar lab attended the ASHG conference this year to present posters. This was the first in-person meeting of ASHG since October 2019. There were over 7,000 attendees this year. ASHG is the largest human genetics conference in the world. Masks were optional but recommended, so we wore them, except for the brief photo-ops to take these pictures. The abstract titles are listed below.

Top row, left to right: Xiaochen Liu, Tulika Kakati, Stanislav Listopad
Bottom row, left to right: Kevin Yuan, and Trina Norden-Krichmar (standing by Chloe Thangavelu’s poster).

Left to right: Kevin Yuan, Trina Norden-Krichmar, Tulika Kakati, Xiaochen Liu, and Stanislav Listopad

Another picture in the Los Angeles Convention Center lobby.

Posters presented (in alphabetical order):

Listopad, Stanislav and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Combination of annotation enrichment approaches for characterization of blood-based RNA sequencing biomarkers”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Los Angeles, CA, October 25-29, 2022.

Liu, Xiaochen and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Evaluation of cell type annotation for peripheral blood mononuclear cells using single-cell RNA versus a deconvolution approach with bulk RNA sequencing”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Los Angeles, CA, October 25-29, 2022.

Kakati, Tulika, Bhattacharyya, D.K., Kalita, J.K., and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “D-CoMEx: Differential co-expressed module extraction to identify phenotype-specific miRNA biomarkers related to diseases”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Los Angeles, CA, October 25-29, 2022.

Thangavelu, Chloe and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Network analysis across cellular reprogramming states”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Los Angeles, CA, October 25-29, 2022.

Yuan, Kun (Kevin), Lucia, R.M., Huang, W.-L., Forman, D., Goodman, D., Ziogas, A., Park, H.L., and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Differentially methylated probes and regions associated with the Healthy Eating Index”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) conference in Los Angeles, CA, October 25-29, 2022.

The following 3 abstracts resulted from Dr. Norden-Krichmar’s without-compensation (WOC) affiliation and collaboration with the Veterans Affairs (VA), using the Million Veterans Program (MVP) database.

Kaplan, D., Vujkovic, M., Dochterman, D.,Wangensteen, K., Devineni, P., Schwantes-An, T., Sendamarai, A., Karnam, P., Sileo, E., Anglin, T., Norden-Krichmar, T., Tsao, P., Morgan, T., Pyarajan, S., Lynch, J., Voight, B., Chang, K. “SAT596 – Germline genetic risk factors for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma among patients with cirrhosis: a genome-wide association study of U.S. veterans”, Journal of Hepatology, Volume 77, Supplement 1, 2022, Page S936, ISSN 0168-8278, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-8278(22)02153-5. Poster presentation at European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL International Liver Conference 2022, London, June 22-26, 2022).

Teerlink, C., Kaplan, D.E., Vujkovic, M., Voight, B., Chang, K., Lynch, J., Duvall, S., Anglin, T., Morgan, T., Schwantes-An, T., Norden-Krichmar, T., Dochterman, D., Devineni, P., Tsao, P., Schneider, C.V.“OS027 – Linear slope of serial FIB-4 measurements predicts liver-related complications and correlates with cirrhosis-associated genetic variants among patients with ALT-based NAFLD phenotype, Journal of Hepatology, Volume 77, Supplement 1, 2022, Pages S30-S31, ISSN 0168-8278, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-8278(22)00473-1. Oral platform presentation at European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL International Liver Conference 2022, London, June 22-26, 2022).

Kaplan, D., Vujkovic, M., Dochterman, D.,Wangensteen, K., Devineni, P., Schwantes-An, T., Sendamarai, A., Karnam, P., Sileo, E., Anglin, T., Norden-Krichmar, T., Tsao, P., Morgan, T., Pyarajan, S., Lynch, J., Voight, B., Chang, K. “Germline genetic risk factors for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma among patients with cirrhosis: a genome-wide association study of U.S. veterans”. Accepted for oral platform presentation at American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Conference 2022, Washington, DC, November 4-7, 2022).

Listopad, S., Magnan, C., Asghar, A., Stolz, A., Tayek, J.A., Liu, Z.X., Morgan, T.R., Norden-Krichmar, T.M. (2022) “Differentiating between liver diseases by applying multiclass machine learning approaches to transcriptomics of liver tissue or blood-based samples”, JHEP Reports, doi:10.1016/j.jhepr.2022.100560.

Chloe Thangavelu (PhD student, Biological Chemistry, PI: Trina Norden-Krichmar) was awarded the NSF INTERN Supplemental award for the Winter and Spring 2023 quarters.  This was a competitive award open to NSF Graduate Research Fellow Program recipients.  During this fellowship, Chloe will be collaborating with the Frederick National Laboratory, which is affiliated with the National Cancer Institute at NIH.

Kakati, T., Bhattacharyya, D.K., Kalita, J.K., and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. (2021)  “DEGNext: Classification of Differentially Expressed Genes from RNA-seq data using a Convolutional Neural Network with Transfer Learning” BMC Bioinformatics, 23:17, doi:10.1186/s12859-021-04527-4.

The DEGnext code is released as open source software on Tulika’s Github site.

Liu, X., Morgan, T.R., and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Comparing the performance of dynamic liver function scoring systems for survival outcome in alcohol-associated hepatitis”, abstract accepted for poster presentation at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) virtual conference, November 12-15, 2021.

Chloe Thangavelu presented a poster at the UCI School of Medicine Grad Day that was held as an in-person, outside event on October 22, 2021. Below is the title of the poster and a picture taken at the event.

Thangavelu, Chloe and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Investigating conservation of chromatin accessibility signatures during iPSC reprogramming across human and mouse ATAC-seq data”.

The Norden-Krichmar lab had a very strong representation again this year with all of the Ph.D. students presenting their research at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) virtual conference in October.  ASHG is the world’s largest human genetics conference.

• Kakati, Tulika, Liu, Z.-X., Bhattacharyya, D.K., Kalita, J.K., Morgan, T.R. and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Pathway analysis enhances characterization of cell types and sample groups in single-cell RNA sequencing”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) virtual conference, October 2021.
• Listopad, Stanislav and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Outlier gene detection to improve biological validation and classification performance in RNA sequencing”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) virtual conference, October 2021.
• Liu, Xiaochen, Liu, Z.-X., Morgan, T.R., and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Comparative analysis of bulk RNA versus single-cell RNA sequencing to profile gene expression in cellular subgroups within peripheral blood mononuclear cells”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) virtual conference, October 2021.
• Thangavelu, Chloe and Norden-Krichmar, T.M. “Investigating conservation of chromatin accessibility signatures during iPSC reprogramming across human and mouse ATAC-seq data”, poster presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) virtual conference, October 2021.

Dr. Norden-Krichmar gave a virtual platform presentation entitled “Integration of multi-omics in alcoholic and non-alcoholic liver disease” in the program session “Big data in alcohol-associated liver disease: What can we learn?” for the Research Society on Alcoholism and International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (RSA/ISBRA) 2021 Joint Scientific Meeting (virtual) June 19-23, 2021.