By Yosef Scher, Senior Science and Technology Editor
Yosef Scher (YS): Hi Eitan (EC). Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. Let’s start by getting to know you.
EC: I’m from Woodmere, NY, I studied in Yeshivat Shaalvim for two years, and I am currently a senior majoring in biology. I plan on attending medical school after graduating from YU in January 2024.
YS: How did you get involved in this research?
EC: In the past, I worked at Mount Sinai in their Genetics/Genomics department in the laboratory of Dr. Yiannis Ioannou. Last year, I joined the lab of Dr. Samira Asgari at the Institute for Genomic Health at Mount Sinai. After reading about her fascinating research, I contacted her and was invited to join her lab, which studies the human genetic basis of infection and immunity.
YS: Whose lab do you work in, and what do you study?
EC: For the past year, I’ve been working in Dr. Asgari’s laboratory, where our goal is to research the frequencies of genetic variants within diverse populations. We’re looking specifically at variants within genes that cause primary immunodeficiencies (PID)––inherited mutations that compromise the immune system’s ability to function (as opposed to acquired immunodeficiencies that are obtained later in life). Most research in the field of genomics has so far focused on populations of European ancestry, while we aim to look at a more diverse field of populations and see if there are genetic variants found in one population that are otherwise not found in other populations, and what implications this may have on the function of PID genes.
YS: What did you gain from this research experience?
EC: My internship in Dr. Asgari’s laboratory provided invaluable hands-on training in bioinformatics tools and exposed me to the research process. I gained experience in a dry lab environment (in contrast to a wet lab where I worked with cells and compounds directly) and in population genomics––a field I did not really understand until I began doing this research. I learned valuable coding skills in the languages of bash and R, both in their applications in laboratory research as well as applications outside the laboratory setting. Additionally, I developed critical data analysis and presentation skills.
YS: What role do you play in this lab?
EC: Everyone in the lab has their own project that is mostly independent from each others’ projects, although we are all working on the same genomic data sets (like Mount Sinai’s BioMe and the 1000 Genomes Projects) and help each other as a team with coding and analysis challenges. My work as an intern so far has been focused on characterizing variants within PID genes by their severity and allele frequency.
YS: Is there anything you encountered that was especially difficult during the research?
EC: One of the biggest challenges I faced was learning to code, as I had little prior coding experience. Additionally, I had to become familiar with new-to-me tools like BioMart and VEP for annotating and analyzing the genomic variants in our datasets.
YS: What did you find most interesting about your research?
EC: We still have so much to discover about the human genome, even after decades of research in the field. The Human Genome Project may have sequenced the human genome 20 years ago, but there is still much more to learn about how our genomes evolved and developed over millennia. Thanks to advancements in genome sequencing technology that have lowered the cost and increased the accuracy of sequencing, we are now at a point where we can sequence large populations to uncover rare genetic variants that may give us greater information about the role each variant and each gene plays.
YS: Lastly, do you have any advice for students interested in lab positions?
EC: I would advise getting involved early and developing relevant skills like coding. With the abundance of online programming courses and tutorials, there’s never been a better time to pick up languages like Python and R that are widely used in computational biology research among many other valuable uses. Resources from MIT OpenCourseWare and similar sites allow you to self-study at your own pace. Gaining coding proficiency will equip you with indispensable practical skills for labs that deal with data gathering and analysis.
Beyond coding, there are opportunities here at YU for students to join as a volunteer in labs like Professor Catrina’s wet lab and Professor Viswanathan’s computational lab, just to name a few, to gain first-hand research experience on campus. Reach out to PIs, express your interest in their work, and inquire if there is an opening at their lab for an undergraduate.
Finally, continue developing your scientific communication abilities through coursework and practice presenting concepts. Having these tangible skills will serve you well in applying for positions.