Serra Akbas Kaya, PhD
Assistant Researcher
Orthopaedic Surgery
School of Medicine

In my postdoctoral research with my PI, Dr. Alliston and co-PI, Dr. Evans, we established a novel mouse to human (M2H) strategy that prioritizes analysis of aging mouse genes based on their potential clinical relevance to human cohorts using RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and generated a computational resource: www.mouse2human.org. The mouse2human strategy using mouse RNAseq and human GWAS to prioritize novel candidate genes has proven powerful and can be applicable to different projects. My research interest in aging and human osteoarthritis had also led her to perform mouse2human on aging mouse RNAseq and published human hip and knee osteoarthritis GWAS data from UK Biobank and arcOGEN. This work prioritized an unbiased selection of <1% genes, including MEPE, among ~ 5000 DEGs in aging mouse bone based on human osteoarthritis associations. I also received a HIVE Emerging Postdoctoral Fellowship from UCSF in 2021 to investigate the osteocyte driven regulators of osteoarthritis (OA) with targeting bone shape changes in human knee and utilizing machine learning algorithms in the MRI images of knee with her mentors Dr. Alliston and Dr. Pedoia. With my scientific expertise and unique combination of skills, including working with mouse models, utilizing molecular and histologic methods, and applying computational biology, I am suited to make significant contributions to this project.