Figure from Zhang et al. (preprint)

Understanding genetic regulation of plasma protein can lead to discovery of novel therapeutic targets and a provide holistic picture of their genetic architecture. I have been involved in several recent and ongoing studies that have jointly leveraged the genome and proteome to obtain insights on how proteins mediate genetic risk for diseases and which proteins might be important in context of certain outcomes. However, since such technologies are fairly recent, a lot remains to be explored in terms understanding the causal variants behind protein level change, post-transcriptional changes, trans regulation of proteins by disease related variants and building proteome-based polygenic risk scores. I am involved in several ongoing collaborations with investigators of Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, which is a unique cohort not only due to the latitude and depth of several omics data, but also for the diversity in ethnic background among the study participants. Ethnicity-specific analysis of the aforementioned topics can further elucidate differences or similarities in disease etiology across the populations. See more in Publications.