Department Seminar: Genetic factors in alcohol dependence and alcohol-induced disease

Natural Sciences I, Room 1114, Natural Sciences I, Room 1114, Irvine, CA, 92697, United States

Department Seminar
Genetic factors in alcohol dependence and alcohol-induced disease
Dr. Trina Norden-Krichmar
Department of Epidemiology, School of Medicine
University of California, Irvine
Tues, May 22, 2018
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Natural Sciences I, room 1114
Alcohol consumption has been linked to a wide variety of social and health issues. The World Health Organization estimates that over 3 million deaths per year can be attributed to alcohol use. There are complex genetic and environmental factors at play that determine whether a person will develop alcohol dependence, and whether a person will subsequently develop an alcohol-induced negative health outcome. In this talk, I will focus on two studies that take different approaches to uncovering the genetic factors that may be influencing alcohol dependence and alcohol-induced disease. In the first study, alcohol dependence metrics from interviews were used as the phenotype in an exome-wide association analysis. In the second study, RNA sequencing was used to explore the gene expression profile for one type of alcohol-induced liver disease. These studies illustrate the different facets to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of alcohol dependence and alcohol-induced disease.

About Trina Norden-Krichmar
Trina Norden-Krichmar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine. The goal of her research is to investigate the genomic factors influencing human health and disease. She has a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of Maryland, M.S. in Computer Science from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Marine Biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. In addition to the laboratory skills acquired by her biological research, she also has over 15 years of experience working as a computer programmer at IBM, the National Institutes of Health, and the Salk Institute. She has expertise performing bioinformatics analyses applied to projects involving RNA sequencing and gene expression microarrays, DNA sequencing and genotyping arrays, microRNAs, methylomics, proteomics, metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics. She is currently interested in applying her skills to the fields of pharmacogenomics and computational drug discovery.