Mutational Signatures as Sensors of Environmental Exposures: Role of Smoking in COVID-19 Vulnerabilities

About this Class

Environmental exposures such as smoking are widely recognized risk factors in the emergence of lung diseases including lung cancer and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, the strength of environmental exposures is difficult to measure, making it challenging to understand their impacts. Since many environmental factors, including smoking, are mutagenic and leave characteristic patterns of mutations, called mutational signatures, Dr. Przytycka postulated that analyzing the interaction of mutational signatures with the activities of molecular pathways, can shed light on the impact of the mutagenic environmental factors to the biological processes. In particular, Dr. Przytycka and her group utilized mutational signatures from lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) data set collected in TCGA to investigate the role of environmental factors in COVID-19 vulnerabilities. By delineating changes associated with smoking in pathway-level gene expression and cell type proportions, our study demonstrates that mutational signatures can be  utilized to study the impact of exogenous mutagenic factors on them. This seminar is open to the public, but registration is required. Speaker: Teresa Przytycka, Ph.D. Senior Investigator National Center of Biotechnology Information National Library of Medicine