Dr Deepti Gurdasani

Profile

I am a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist by background. After completing my MBBS and MD in Internal Medicine at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, I completed my MPhil in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Cambridge in 2010, followed by a PhD in examination of genetic factors associated with disease in genetically diverse populations (2013). My subsequent work as a post-doctoral fellows at the Wellcome Sanger Institute focused on the study of population history, and historical migration across Africa (as co-lead of the African Genome Variation Project). As a senior staff-scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, I co-led the Uganda Genome Resource Project (Gurdasani et al., Cell, 2019), studying genetic determinants of disease across ethnically diverse populations.

My research interests range from the development of new statistical methodology for population genetics, genome-wide association studies and genomic prediction, to developing new pipelines for drug discovery using large-scale multi-dimensional data.

Research

Groups members

I’m looking for talented and motivated PhD students and postdoctoral candidates interested in machine learning/deep learning methods and applications to large-scale clinical and genomic data to join my team. Please email me if you are interested.

Summary

My current work focuses on the development of novel methods in machine learning and their application to genomic and clinical prediction as well as inference of novel genomic drug targets. I work closely with Genomics England and co-lead the GeCIP project on prediction loss of function effects on health and disease within Genomics England.

Key Publications

1. Gurdasani D. et al. Uganda Genomics Resource enables insights into population history and genomic discovery in Africa. Cell, 2019.
2. Gurdasani D. et al. Genomics of disease risk in globally diverse populations. Nature Reviews Genetics, 2019.
3. Kuchenbaecker K, Telkar N, Reiker T, Walters RG, Lin K, Eriksson A, Gurdasani D et al. The transferability of lipid loci across African, Asian and European cohorts. Nature Communication, 2019.
4. Muriuki JM, Mentzer AJ, Band G, Gilchrist JJ, Carstensen T, Lule SA, Goheen MM, Joof F, Kimita W., Mogire R, Culand C, Diarra A, Rautanen A, Pomilla C, Gurdasani D et al. The ferroportin Q248H mutation protects from anemia, but not malaria or bacteremia. Science Advances. 2019
5. Fatumo S, Carstensen T, Nashiru O, Gurdasani D et al. Complimentary Methods for Multivariate Genome-Wide Association Study Identify New Susceptibility Genes for Blood Cell Traits. Front Genet. 2019 Apr 26
6. Ekoru K, Young EH, Dillon D, Gurdasani D. et al. HIV treatment is associated with a two-fold higher probability of raised triglycerides: Pooled Analyses in 21 023 individuals in sub-Saharan Africa. Glob Health Epidemiology and Genomics; 2018.
7. Thorne L, Nalwoga A, Mentzer AJ, de Rougemont A, Hosmillo M, Webb E, Nampiija M, Muhwezi A, Carstensen T, Gurdasani D et al. The First Norovirus Longitudinal Seroepidemiological Study From Sub-Saharan Africa Reveals High Seroprevalence of Diverse Genotypes Associated With Host Susceptibility Factors. J Infect Dis. 2018 Jul 24;218(5):716-725
8. Partap U, Allcock SH, Parker E, Gurdasani D et al. Association between early life antibiotic use and childhood overweight and obesity: a narrative review. Glob Health Epidemiol Genom. 2018 Oct 24.
9. Pollard MO, Gurdasani D, et al. Long reads: their purpose and place. Hum Molecular Genetics; 2018 May.
10. Allcock S, Young EH, Holmes M, Gurdasani D et al. Antimicrobial resistance in human populations: challenges and opportunities. Glob Health Epidemiol Genom 2017 May.
11. McLaren PJ, Pulit SL, Gurdasani D et al. Evaluating the Impact of Functional Genetic Variation on HIV-1 Control. J Infect Dis. 2017, 216(9):1063-1069.
12. Heckerman D, Gurdasani D, et al. Linear mixed model for heritability estimation that explicitly addresses environmental variation. PNAS 2016.
13. McLaren PJ, Coulonges C, Bartha I, Lenz TL, Deutsch AJ, Bashirova A, Buchbinder S, Carrington MN, Cossarizza A, Dalmau J, De Luca A, Goedert JJ, Gurdasani D, et al. Polymorphisms of large effect explain the majority of the host genetic contribution to variation of HIV-1 virus load. PNAS 2015; 112(47):14658-63.
14. Pagani L, Schiffels S, Gurdasani D, et al. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. American journal of human genetics 2015; 96(6): 986-91.
15. Gurdasani D. et al. The African Genome Variation Project shapes medical genetics in Africa. Nature. 2014 Dec; 517, 327–332
16. Gurdasani D, et al. A systematic review of extreme phenotypes in HIV control and Progression. AIDS. 2014 Jan; 28(2): 149-162.
17. Global Lipids Genetics C, Willer CJ, Schmidt EM, Senguta S, Pelosos GM, Gustafsson S, Kanoni S, Ganna A, Chen J, Buchkovich ML, Mora S, Beckmann JS, Bragg-Gresham JL, Chang H, Demirkan A, Hertog HMD, Do R, Donnelly LA, Ehret GB, Esko T, Feitosa MF, Ferreira T, Fischer K, Fontanillas P, Fraser RM, Freitag DF, Gurdasani D et al. Discovery and refinement of loci associated with lipid levels. Nature Genetics 2013; 45(11): 1274-83
18. Do R, Willer CJ, Schmidt EM, Sengupta S, Gao C, Peloso GM, Gustafsson S, Kanoni S, Ganna A, Chen J, Buchkovich ML, Mora S, Beckmann JS, Bragg-Gresham JL, Chang H, Demirkan A, Hertog HMD, Donnelly LA, Ehret GB, Esko T, Feitosa MF, Ferreira T, Fischer K, Fontanillas P, Fraser HM, Freitag DF, Gurdasani D et al. Common variants associated with plasma triglycerides and risk for coronary artery disease. Nature Genetics 2013; 45(11): 1345-52.
19. Dillon DG, Gurdasani D, et al. Association of HIV and ART with cardiometabolic traits in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Epidemiology 2013; 42(6):1754-71.
20. Ye Z, Haycock PC, Gurdasani D, et al. The association between circulating lipoprotein(a) and type 2 diabetes: is it causal? Diabetes. 2014. 63(1):332-42.
21. Olson AD, Meyer L, Prins M, Thiebaut R, Gurdasani D, et al. An Evaluation of HIV Elite Controller Definitions within a Large Seroconverter Cohort Collaboration. PLoS One 2014; 9(1).
22. Gurdasani D, Sjouke B, Tsimikas S, Hovingh GK, Luben RN, Wainwright NWJ, Pomilla C, Wareham NJ, Khaw KT, Boekholdt SM, Sandhu MS. Lipoprotein(a) and Risk of Coronary, Cerebrovascular, and Peripheral Artery Disease. The EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population Study. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2012
23. O’Connell J*, Gurdasani D*, et al. A general approach for haplotype phasing across the full spectrum of relatedness. PLOS Genetics. 2014; 10(4): e1004234.

*joint first author contribution

Collaborators

Internal
Prof. Sir Mark Caulfield; Prof. Panos Deloukas; Prof. Michael Barnes

External
Prof. Mihaela Van der Schaar (University of Cambridge); Prof. John Overington (Medicines Discovery Catapult)

News

• African genomes sequenced (BBC News World Service (Science in Action), November 2019
• African genomes sequenced (BBC Radio 4 (Inside Science), October 2019