Elaine Mardis

Last updated
Elaine Mardis
Alma mater University of Oklahoma
Scientific career
Institutions McDonnell Genome Institute
Washington University School of Medicine
Bio-Rad Laboratories

Elaine R. Mardis (born September 28, 1962) is the co-executive director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital, where she also serves as the Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine. [1] She also is professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. [2] Mardis’s research focuses on the genomic characterization of cancer and its implications for cancer medicine. [3] She was part of the team that reported the first next-generation-based sequencing of a whole cancer genome, [4] [5] and participated extensively in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP). [3] [6] [7] [8]

Contents

Biography

Mardis was born in North Platte, Nebraska. She gained a passion for science at an early age, and credits her father, a chemistry professor for more than 30 years, for nurturing this passion. [9] [10]

She received her undergraduate degree in Zoology from the University of Oklahoma in 1984. [1] During her senior year she took a course in biochemistry that was taught by Bruce Roe, PhD, which says opened her eyes to the world of molecular biology. [9] She stayed at the University of Oklahoma for her doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr. Roe, who was one of the first academic scientists to have a fluorescent DNA sequencer in the laboratory. [10] As a result, during her doctoral work Mardis learned the art of DNA sequencing, at a time when few others were doing this. [9] [10]

After obtaining her PhD in chemistry and biochemistry in 1989, Mardis did postgraduate work in industry at Bio-Rad Laboratories in Hercules, California. [1]

In 1993, Mardis joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine. [1] Over the next 23 years, she held several and academic and leadership roles at the University, including serving as co-director of the McDonnell Genome Institute. [3] In that position, she contributed substantially to the sequencing and analysis of the human genome, [11] and was instrumental in establishing the utility of massively parallel sequencing technologies for understanding cancer biology. [3] Her work in cancer genetics and genomics has provided insights into the genetic drivers of many types of cancer, including acute myeloid leukemia, [7] [12] [13] breast cancer, [14] [15] glioblastoma, [16] and lung adenocarcinoma. [17] [18] By better defining the landscape of germline and somatic alterations, this research helps drive new strategies for treating cancer, and is central to the concept of precision medicine.

Since joining Nationwide Children's Hospital in 2016, Dr. Mardis has turned the focus of her research to the incorporation of next-generation sequencing assays and established knowledge about cancer genomics into clinical and therapeutic decision-making, and into the design of new approaches to cancer immunotherapy. [3] [19] [20]

In 2015, Mardis helped launch an open access, precision medicine journal, Molecular Case Studies, in conjunction with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. [21] She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief. [22] In 2020 she was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Disease Models & Mechanisms journal, with Elizabeth Patton the Editor-in-Chief. [23]

Mardis was elected as president of the American Association for Cancer Research for 2019–2020. [24]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genomics</span> Discipline in genetics

Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dimensional structural configuration. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of all of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wellcome Sanger Institute</span> British genomics research institute

The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human Genome Project</span> Human genome sequencing programme

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint. It started in 1990 and was completed in 2003. It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. Planning for the project started after it was adopted in 1984 by the US government, and it officially launched in 1990. It was declared complete on April 14, 2003, and included about 92% of the genome. Level "complete genome" was achieved in May 2021, with a remaining only 0.3% bases covered by potential issues. The final gapless assembly was finished in January 2022.

Mark Bender Gerstein is an American scientist working in bioinformatics and Data Science. As of 2009, he is co-director of the Yale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is a project to catalogue the genetic mutations responsible for cancer using genome sequencing and bioinformatics. The overarching goal was to apply high-throughput genome analysis techniques to improve the ability to diagnose, treat, and prevent cancer through a better understanding of the genetic basis of the disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Velculescu</span>

Victor E. Velculescu is a Professor of Oncology and Co-Director of Cancer Biology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is internationally known for his discoveries in genomics and cancer research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyclin D3</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

G1/S-specific cyclin-D3 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CCND3 gene.

Personal genomics or consumer genetics is the branch of genomics concerned with the sequencing, analysis and interpretation of the genome of an individual. The genotyping stage employs different techniques, including single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis chips, or partial or full genome sequencing. Once the genotypes are known, the individual's variations can be compared with the published literature to determine likelihood of trait expression, ancestry inference and disease risk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SF3B1</span> Protein-coding gene in humans

Splicing factor 3B subunit 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SF3B1 gene.

Jeffrey Ivan Gordon is a biologist and the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is internationally known for his research on gastrointestinal development and how gut microbial communities affect normal intestinal function, shape various aspects of human physiology including our nutritional status, and affect predisposition to diseases. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Philosophical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whole genome sequencing</span> Determining nearly the entirety of the DNA sequence of an organisms genome at a single time

Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing, complete genome sequencing, or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, in the chloroplast.

Cancer genome sequencing is the whole genome sequencing of a single, homogeneous or heterogeneous group of cancer cells. It is a biochemical laboratory method for the characterization and identification of the DNA or RNA sequences of cancer cell(s).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">$1,000 genome</span> Era of predictive and personalized medicine

The $1,000 genome refers to an era of predictive and personalized medicine during which the cost of fully sequencing an individual's genome (WGS) is roughly one thousand USD. It is also the title of a book by British science writer and founding editor of Nature Genetics, Kevin Davies. By late 2015, the cost to generate a high-quality "draft" whole human genome sequence was just below $1,500.

In DNA sequencing, a read is an inferred sequence of base pairs corresponding to all or part of a single DNA fragment. A typical sequencing experiment involves fragmentation of the genome into millions of molecules, which are size-selected and ligated to adapters. The set of fragments is referred to as a sequencing library, which is sequenced to produce a set of reads.

SNV calling from NGS data is any of a range of methods for identifying the existence of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) from the results of next generation sequencing (NGS) experiments. These are computational techniques, and are in contrast to special experimental methods based on known population-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms. Due to the increasing abundance of NGS data, these techniques are becoming increasingly popular for performing SNP genotyping, with a wide variety of algorithms designed for specific experimental designs and applications. In addition to the usual application domain of SNP genotyping, these techniques have been successfully adapted to identify rare SNPs within a population, as well as detecting somatic SNVs within an individual using multiple tissue samples.

Tumour heterogeneity describes the observation that different tumour cells can show distinct morphological and phenotypic profiles, including cellular morphology, gene expression, metabolism, motility, proliferation, and metastatic potential. This phenomenon occurs both between tumours and within tumours. A minimal level of intra-tumour heterogeneity is a simple consequence of the imperfection of DNA replication: whenever a cell divides, a few mutations are acquired—leading to a diverse population of cancer cells. The heterogeneity of cancer cells introduces significant challenges in designing effective treatment strategies. However, research into understanding and characterizing heterogeneity can allow for a better understanding of the causes and progression of disease. In turn, this has the potential to guide the creation of more refined treatment strategies that incorporate knowledge of heterogeneity to yield higher efficacy.

In genetics, coverage is one of several measures of the depth or completeness of DNA sequencing, and is more specifically expressed in any of the following terms:

The mutanome is the entirety of somatic cancer mutations in an individual tumor.

Li Ding is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University. She is known for the development of multiple computational tools now commonly used in cancer biology research, including VarScan, HotSpot3D, and BreakDancer.

Circular consensus sequencing (CCS) is a DNA sequencing method that is used in conjunction with single-molecule real-time sequencing to yield highly accurate long-read sequencing datasets with read lengths averaging 15–25 kb with median accuracy greater than 99.9%. These long reads, which are created via the formation of consensus sequencing obtained from multiple passes on a single DNA molecule, can be used to improve results for complex applications such as single nucleotide and structural variant detection, genome assembly, assembly of difficult polyploid or highly repetitive genomes, and assembly of metagenomes.

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