Investigating the impact of human genetic variation on human pancreatic islet stress responses in the context of diabetes.
Diabetes is a complex genetic diseases with significant environmental components. While previous studies have identified numerous human genetic variants that are significantly associated with diabetes, the biological mechanisms through which they impact disease etiology and interact with diabetes-relevant cellular stresses (inflammatory stress, endoplasmic reticulum stress etc.) still remains incompletely understood. My research focuses on human pancreatic islets - organoids responsible for modulating blood sugar levels - and utilizes high-throughput multiomic approaches within an integrated computational framework to understand how these diabetes-associated variants (dys)regulate responses to cellular stresses and thereby contribute towards islet dysfunction.