Kristen Wade, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Neurology
School of Medicine

Her additional bench research training in molecular genetics during that time has provided her with a well-rounded grasp of the phenotypic implications and functional interpretations of disease associated variation. As a predoctoral student in the laboratory of Dr. David Pollock at CU Denver-Anschutz, she pursued rigorous, computational thesis work in evolutionary genomics. Her thesis work focused on understanding evolutionary patterns of the non-coding and repetitive content of the genome, which undergo significantly different selective pressures than coding regions. This experience thoroughly prepared Dr. Wade to engage with non-coding disease variation, which comprise the majority of GWAS signals. In addition to her thesis work, she participated in variety of collaborations across genetic disciplines, which have provided her with a highly interdisciplinary understanding of genomic variation and its functional implications in disease. In 2022 she successfully defended her thesis entitled: “Homology unleashed: non-parametric and alignment-free methods for understanding genome evolution”. She began her postdoctoral work with Dr. Jill Hollenbach at University of California, San Francisco, in 2022. Here, she has continued to expand her boundaries and gained expertise in new bioinformatics methods, implementing de novo genome assembly and linear models of association, as well as receiving training in neurobiology and autoimmune diseases. This diversity of experience, across multiple specialties, makes Dr. Wade uniquely suited to pursue integrative genetic mapping and modelling of complex trait-associated variation. Her background and training have prepared her to participate in the frontier of genetics research and her computational bioinformatics experience makes her well-equipped to contribute novel solutions.

• Integrating genomic and epidemiologic data to accelerate progress toward schistosomiasis elimination.
  eLife 2022 Lund AJ, Wade KJ, Nikolakis ZL, Ivey KN, Perry BW, Pike HNC, Paull SH, Liu Y, Castoe TA, Pollock DD, Carlton EJ
• The Disordered Spindly C-terminus Interacts with RZZ Subunits ROD-1 and ZWL-1 in the Kinetochore through the Same Sites in C. Elegans.
  Journal of molecular biology 2021 Henen MA, Myers W, Schmitt LR, Wade KJ, Born A, Nichols PJ, Vögeli B
• Mology: A fast, general synteny detection engine
  bioRxiv 2021 Ahrens, J.A., Wade, K.J., Pollock, D.D.
• Viral CpG Deficiency Provides No Evidence That Dogs Were Intermediate Hosts for SARS-CoV-2.
  Molecular biology and evolution 2020 Pollock DD, Castoe TA, Perry BW, Lytras S, Wade KJ, Robertson DL, Holmes EC, Boni MF, Kosakovsky Pond SL, Parry R, Carlton EJ, Wood JLN, Pennings PS, Goldstein RA
• Development of a tissue augmented Bayesian model for expression quantitative trait loci analysis.
  Mathematical biosciences and engineering : MBE 2019 Zhuang YH, Wade K, Saba LM, Kechris K
• Krüppel-like transcription factors KLF1 and KLF2 have unique and coordinate roles in regulating embryonic erythroid precursor maturation.
  Haematologica 2014 Vinjamur DS, Wade KJ, Mohamad SF, Haar JL, Sawyer ST, Lloyd JA