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MS BIOI Student Angela Andaleon's Lab Research and Conference Experience
MS Bioinformatics student Angela Andaleon鈥檚 platform presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Conference in San Diego in October 2018 was well-received, even prompting encouraging invitations from top PhD programs鈥� professors in attendance. Despite the ASHG conference being the world鈥檚 largest genetics conference and the record-breaking 9,000 conference attendees present, she wasn鈥檛 nervous. 鈥淚鈥檓 short, so I can鈥檛 see past my laptop and can鈥檛 see the audience鈥� Angela said, which may have helped. Angela had submitted to ASHG her abstract 鈥淭ranscriptome-based association study in Hispanic cohorts implicates novel genes in lipid traits鈥� for a poster presentation. She was notified that her abstract scored among the top abstracts at the ASHG 2018 meeting and was asked to present a platform talk, which 10% of abstracts receive; she gladly accepted. The conference experience energized Angela鈥檚 career choice: 鈥淕enetics will be a huge part of medicine soon. It鈥檚 encouraging to be surrounded by 9,000 scientists who are also like yes, this will be the future.鈥� Angela also presented at the International Genetic Epidemiology Society Conference earlier that week, which strengthened her presentation experience. Both conferences鈥� costs were supported by one of Loyola鈥檚 interdisciplinary research scholarships, the Carbon Fellowship.
Angela entered Loyola originally as a pre-med student and met Bioinformatics鈥� Dr. Heather Wheeler in her freshman year when Dr. Wheeler presented in her First Year Research Experience class. Angela was intrigued by Dr. Wheeler鈥檚 discussion on the necessity of diverse human genetic studies and met with Dr. Wheeler at the beginning of her sophomore year and joined her lab. Dr. Wheeler鈥檚 research focuses on the expansion of diversity in human genetic data, which is currently 79% European ancestry. Results in European populations can鈥檛 be accurately extrapolated to other populations for precision medicine, so data for other populations needs to be studied - which is what Dr. Wheeler鈥檚 lab intends to do: 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to help a little bit, at least in the long run of expanding the diversity of genetic studies so that precision medicine can be expanded to all people and not just those of European descent,鈥� Angela noted.
Angela said working in the lab shaped her academic and career path as a sophomore, and she felt at first unnerved by the new material: 鈥淚 had absolutely no experience with coding, barely any experience in statistics, and I hadn鈥檛 even taken genetics at that point, so there was a lot of self-motivated learning and throwing you into the deep end of the pool.鈥� After three years in the lab, she is now quite comfortable and is completing her thesis-based BS/MS degree in Bioinformatics: 鈥淩ight now I鈥檓 working on a Hispanic population from 4 regions in the United States, about 12,000 people鈥� I鈥檓 working to predict gene expressions of those populations and see how the gene expressions traits are different in the Hispanic population versus mostly studied European population and I found 21 significant genes that were novel for any lipid association in the Genome-wide Association Study catalog, which is the current database.鈥� These results have since been and are now awaiting peer review.
Angela would like to work in industry in computational human genomics in the Chicago area, a field expanding in prominent hospitals and research universities. What would she say to students interested in bioinformatics? 鈥淜now that it鈥檚 not scary, the programming is a lot of trial and error鈥� but this will be the future of biology, and we can鈥檛 do biology without bioinformatics. It鈥檚 the future so embrace it!鈥�
