CBCB Seminar
February 12, 2024 3:30 PM
FinTech Building, STAR Campus, Room 501
591 Collaboration Way, Newark, DE 19713
CBCB and Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences Joint seminar: Understanding the Epigenomic and Transcriptomic Basis of Retinal Adaptations to Diet and Lifestyle
Anupam Kumar Mondal, Ph.D.
Neurobiology, Neurodegeneration and Repair Laboratory,
National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
Abstract: Retinal diseases cause progressive and irreversible visual impairment among patients and severely disrupt their quality of life. Genetics, aging and lifestyle factors such as diet and smoking are among significant contributors to retinal disease risk. Diversity of retinal pathologies and their underlying etiology have restricted treatment development, and therefore new approaches are necessary for therapeutic advances. Network medicine – a new discipline combining omics technologies, network science and machine intelligence, has proven immensely useful in investigations of complex biomedical problems and has tremendous potential in retinal research. I have applied multi-omics backed network analysis to various aspects of retinal disease research to uncover disease mechanisms, aid drug discovery and characterize impacts of lifestyle factors such as diet on the aging retinal health. Our studies have demonstrated crucial roles of epigenomic and metabolic pathways in retinal disease onset and have unlocked new opportunities for mitigating retinal disease.
Bio: Anupam Kumar Mondal is a post-doctoral research scientist at the Neurobiology, Neurodegeneration and Repair Laboratory within the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health. He earned his PhD in Biological Sciences from the Genomics and Integrative Biology Institute of CSIR in New Delhi, India focusing on the genomic and transcriptomic differences in pulmonary and extra-pulmonary clinical isolate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After completing his PhD, he joined the NEI lab of Anand Swaroop, researching retinal degenerative disease and aging in the retina. His interests lie in identifying pre-pathology molecular signatures using time-series experiments, is key for designing interventions to mitigate diseases and aging-related frailty, especially in the context of the visual and nervous systems.
