Ivy Aneas

research associate
ianeas

My research interests stem from several GWAS studies that have implicated noncoding SNPs in the risk of common diseases. One of the major hypothesis that we pursue is that variation on these noncoding sequences can have an impact on phenotype by altering expression of nearby genes. In order to identify those potential functional non-coding regions, I have spent several years in the development of new technologies and strategies to identify and characterize them. These challenges include: 1) understanding how enhancers coordinate to determine a complex pattern of gene expression 2) understanding the dynamics of gene regulation across time, space and in response to stimuli, and 3) evaluate the functional impact of regulatory variation in phenotypic variation and human diseases. While much of my recent experience has included working with cardiovascular biology and genomics of developmental genes, the strategies that I have developed and utilized are readily applicable to a broad spectrum of disciplines.

Projects

Title: Characterization of the Regulatory Architecture Controlling the Expression of TBX20 During Heart Development
Description: We proposed to develop and test new tools and metrics to identify enhancers regulating TBX20, such as BAC-based enhancer trapping and zebrafish transgenic reporter assays.

Title: Epigenetic regulation during Heart development
Description : we proposed to use several chromatin marks in order to determine the temporal dynamic changes in chromatin landscape associated to cardiac gene expression. For this, we will use mouse hearts in different stages of development combined to high throughput approaches, such as RNA-Seq and ChiP-Seq technologies.

Title: Functional Genomics of IL-33 expression and asthma risk
Description: The goal of this project is to understand which cells express IL33, the chromosomal elements that regulate this expression, and how they are influenced by polymorphisms in the population.

Publications

Gómez-Marín C, Tena JJ, Acemel RD, López-Mayorga M, Naranjo S, de la Calle-Mustienes E, Maeso I, Beccari L, Aneas I, Vielmas E, Bovolenta P, Nobrega MA, Carvajal J, Gómez-Skarmeta JL (2015) Evolutionary comparison reveals that diverging CTCF sites are signatures of ancestral topological associating domains borders. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112(24) 7542-7 PMID:26034287

Smemo S, Tena JJ, Kim KH, Gamazon ER, Sakabe NJ, Gómez-Marín C, Aneas I, Credidio FL, Sobreira DR, Wasserman NF, Lee JH, Puviindran V, Tam D, Shen M, Son JE, Vakili NA, Sung HK, Naranjo S, Acemel RD, Manzanares M, Nagy A, Cox NJ, Hui CC, Gomez-Skarmeta JL, Nóbrega MA (2014) Obesity-associated variants within FTO form long-range functional connections with IRX3. Nature 507(7492) 371-5 PMID:24646999

Distler MG, Plant LD, Sokoloff G, Hawk AJ, Aneas I, Wuenschell GE, Termini J, Meredith SC, Nobrega MA, Palmer AA (2012) Glyoxalase 1 increases anxiety by reducing GABAA receptor agonist methylglyoxal. J Clin Invest 122(6) 2306-15 PMID:22585572

Auton A, Fledel-Alon A, Pfeifer S, Venn O, Ségurel L, Street T, Leffler EM, Bowden R, Aneas I, Broxholme J, Humburg P, Iqbal Z, Lunter G, Maller J, Hernandez RD, Melton C, Venkat A, Nobrega MA, Bontrop R, Myers S, Donnelly P, Przeworski M, McVean G (2012) A fine-scale chimpanzee genetic map from population sequencing. Science 336(6078) 193-8 PMID:22422862

Sakabe NJ, Aneas I, Shen T, Shokri L, Park SY, Bulyk ML, Evans SM, Nobrega MA (2012) Dual transcriptional activator and repressor roles of TBX20 regulate adult cardiac structure and function. Hum Mol Genet 21(10) 2194-204 PMID:22328084

Shen T, Aneas I, Sakabe N, Dirschinger RJ, Wang G, Smemo S, Westlund JM, Cheng H, Dalton N, Gu Y, Boogerd CJ, Cai CL, Peterson K, Chen J, Nobrega MA, Evans SM (2011) Tbx20 regulates a genetic program essential to adult mouse cardiomyocyte function. J Clin Invest 121(12) 4640-54 PMID:22080862

Schneider I, Aneas I, Gehrke AR, Dahn RD, Nobrega MA, Shubin NH (2011) Appendage expression driven by the Hoxd Global Control Region is an ancient gnathostome feature. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108(31) 12782-6 PMID:21765002

Savic D, Ye H, Aneas I, Park SY, Bell GI, Nobrega MA (2011) Alterations in TCF7L2 expression define its role as a key regulator of glucose metabolism. Genome Res 21(9) 1417-25 PMID:21673050

Taher L, McGaughey DM, Maragh S, Aneas I, Bessling SL, Miller W, Nobrega MA, McCallion AS, Ovcharenko I (2011) Genome-wide identification of conserved regulatory function in diverged sequences. Genome Res 21(7) 1139-49 PMID:21628450

Wasserman NF, Aneas I, Nobrega MA (2010) An 8q24 gene desert variant associated with prostate cancer risk confers differential in vivo activity to a MYC enhancer. Genome Res 20(9) 1191-7 PMID:20627891