Philip Awadalla

Philip Awadalla is a professor of medical and population genetics at the Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal, the Department of Biochemistry, McGill University and is Principal Investigator of the CARTaGENE biobank.[1]

Career

Philip Awadalla completed his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland under the supervision of Professor Deborah Charlesworth in 2001. He then completed a Killam trust Fellowship and Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowships under the supervision of Professors Sarah Otto at the University of British Columbia (2001) and Charles Langley at the University of California, Davis (US) (2001-2003).

In 2004, Awadalla was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Genetics and Centre for Bioinformatics (led by Prof. Bruce Weir) at North Carolina State University. His work there included identifying potential genetic targets for vaccines to Plasmodium falciparum, the main malaria parasite.[2][3]

Since 2007 Awadalla has been an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at the Université de Montréal. In 2009 he became the Executive Scientific Director of the CARTaGENE Biobank of Québec. His research focuses on next-generation genomic approaches and the development of computational tools in fundamental genomic research, including genomic approaches to the study of disease.[4] This has included the first genetic maps and mapping of drug resistance genes in malaria.[5][6] Awadalla discovered the relationship of a histone methylating factor encoded by the gene PRDM9 and child-hood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.[7][8]

Research by Awadalla (with Matthew Hurles of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) was first to directly estimate the number of mutations passed on by individual parents to human offspring, fewer than was previously estimated.[9][10]

Awadalla is part of a number of collaborative programmes, including the analysis and functional analysis groups of the 1000 Genomes Project.[11]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.cartagene.qc.ca/
  2. ↑ Mu, J.; Awadalla, P.; Duan, J.; McGee, K. M.; Keebler, J.; Seydel, K.; McVean, G. A. T.; Su, X. Z. (2006). "Genome-wide variation and identification of vaccine targets in the Plasmodium falciparum genome". Nature Genetics 39 (1): 126–130. doi:10.1038/ng1924. PMID 17159981.
  3. ↑ Smith, Zach (22 January 2007). "NCSU evolutionary geneticist researches malaria's bite". Triangle Business Journal. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  4. ↑ Awadalla, Philip; et al., (2010). "Direct Measure of the De Novo Mutation Rate in Autism and Schizophrenia Cohorts". American Journal of Human Genetics 87 (3): 316–324. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.07.019. PMC 2933353. PMID 20797689. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  5. ↑ Idaghdour, Y.; Quinlan, J.; Goulet, J. -P.; Berghout, J.; Gbeha, E.; Bruat, V.; De Malliard, T.; Grenier, J. -C.; Gomez, S.; Gros, P.; Rahimy, M. C.; Sanni, A.; Awadalla, P. (2012). "Feature Article: Evidence for additive and interaction effects of host genotype and infection in malaria". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (42): 16786. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204945109.
  6. ↑ Mu, Jianbing; et al., (2010). "Plasmodium falciparum genome-wide scans for positive selection, recombination hot spots". Nature Genetics 42 (3): 268–271. doi:10.1038/ng.528. PMC 2828519. PMID 20101240. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  7. ↑ Smith, Zach (26 December 2012). "This Week in Genome Research". Genome Web. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  8. ↑ Hussin, Julie; et al., (2012). "Rare allelic forms of PRDM9 associated with childhood leukemia.". Genome Research.
  9. ↑ Conrad, D. F.; Keebler, J. E. M.; Depristo, M. A.; Lindsay, S. J.; Zhang, Y.; Casals, F.; Idaghdour, Y.; Hartl, C. L.; Torroja, C.; Garimella, K. V.; Zilversmit, M.; Cartwright, R.; Rouleau, G. A.; Daly, M.; Stone, E. A.; Hurles, M. E.; Awadalla, P.; 1000 Genomes, P. (2011). "Variation in genome-wide mutation rates within and between human families". Nature Genetics 43 (7): 712–714. doi:10.1038/ng.862. PMC 3322360. PMID 21666693.
  10. ↑ "Family Genetic Research Reveals the Speed of Human Mutation". Science Daily. 13 June 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  11. ↑ 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. "An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes. 1000 Genomes Project Consortium. Nature 2012 Nov 1;491(7422):56-65. doi: 10.1038/nature11632.".

External links