DISEASE GENOMICS
Using our understanding of human evolution and social experience to build a better understanding of human disease.
NORTHERN CAPE TUBERCULOSIS RESEARCH PROJECT
The ultimate goal of the NCTB project is to determine why some people infected with TB can live their entire lives latent with no issues, while others progress to active infection requiring months of antibiotic treatment. For this project we are collecting a genetically diverse case-control cohort in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, where latent TB infection is extremely high (>80% of residents). For more information on this project, please visit https://nctb.ucdavis.edu
TEXAS RURAL HEALTH AND HERITAGE PROJECT
In this project, we combine epidemiology with human biology and epigenomics in a biocultural framework to better understand the health impacts of structural violence and multigenerational poverty in the rural US. The study centers on Texas tenant farmers and their descendants who raised crops on land owned by someone else for a share of the harvest. Because farming is simultaneously a social and environmental practice, structural violence on farmlands represents a set of environmental and social exposures that disproportionately impact health outcomes along both class and racial lines - with poor rural peoples being disproportionately affected. In this study, we are evaluating the metabolic, hormonal, immunological, and genomic consequences of tenant farming in central Texas with the goal of understanding how these exploitative labor practices contribute to health disparities among the descendants of tenant farmers today. For more information please visit our website.
POPULATION GENOMICS OF AGING AND ALZHEIMER'S
Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting nearly 7 million Americans, a number that is expected to double over the next 30 years. However, the risk for developing Alzheimer's is not evenly distributed, with some groups of Americans being >2x more likely to develop the disease. Our lab works to understand the genetic architecture underlying this differential risk with the ultimately goal of identifying drug targets for future treatments.
SINGLE-CELL GENOMICS
A growing area of interest in the lab is the use of single-cell technologies to link genome-wide association and natural selection scans with cellular function. In collaboration with several groups around the country we are studying single-cell gene expression patterns associated with immune response in humans and mouse models of neurological conditions and social determinants of health.