Erik Corona, a Biomedical Informatics trainee working in Atul Butte’s lab, was awarded a spot in the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Corona will finish his second year this Fall.

Corona’s fellowship project involves leveraging the evolutionary history of mutations in order to learn more about how phenotypes evolved throughout human history.

The project’s aims are to characterize complex diseases, finding whether positive selection has recently increased our susceptibility to diseases by selecting for “risky” or “protective” genes, which have previously been linked to increased susceptibility to disease via genome-wide association studies.

Much of this research has already been carried out by testing thousands of genes associated with 7 complex diseases (Type 1 and 2 Diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Coronary Artery Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Hypertension, and Crohn’s Disease) for positive selection, and seeing if these are enriched for positive selection. “Risky” Type 1 Diabetes genes show extremely large positive selection pressures.

Corona hopes to find methods that will incorporate the evolutionary history of disease-associated genes into disease prevention and treatment.

According to the NSF website, “Fellows are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering” during the three year fellowship. “These individuals will be crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security.