Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) are powerful tools for identifying disease pathways, but the associations are typically weak and hard to interpret. Additionally, the complicated gene expression landscape—which is composed of interconnected cycles of transcript, protein, and metabolite levels—cannot be reliably inferred from gene sequences and chromosome modifications alone.

In this webinar, Karsten Suhre, Director of the Bioinformatics Core at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, will discuss how proteomics can complement GWAS and EWAS in order to identify SNP-protein (pQTLs) and CpG-protein associations (pQTMs) and link variation in the genetic code and DNA methylation patterns to disease endpoints.

In a recent Nature Communications manuscript, Dr. Suhre and collaborators measured 1,123 circulating proteins using the SomaScan Assay. They then made connections between protein abundance and methylation levels at >470,000 CpG sites to identify 98 highly significant pQTMs (out of >12,000 total). In this webinar, Dr. Suhre will discuss these and earlier findings from GWAS and explore how the SomaScan Assay can be used as a tool in multi-omics studies.

Karsten Suhre, PhD

Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Director of the Bioinformatics Core, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar

Karsten Suhre is a Bioinformatician and Systems Biologist studying human disease at the intersection of genomics and metabolomics. Before joining Weill Cornell Medicine in 2011, Suhre served as Professor in the Department of Biology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany and as Group Leader for Metabolomics Research at the Institute for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology of Helmholtz Center Munich. Suhre also held the position of the Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) where he worked for 10 years excluding a two-year stint as a Project Engineer in the German Automotive Industry. Over 180 publications and numerous international presentations are a testament to Suhre’s extensive research career and interdisciplinary expertise.