Center of Genomic Diversity at Morehouse School of Medicine

• The center seeks to implement highly skilled administrative data management and technology development teams to enhance genomic research tools and methodologies, with a focus on minority health research.
  • This involves developing novel techniques and best practices to investigate the interactions of social and biological determinants of health.
• A key objective is to improve genomics research education and the dissemination of research findings.
  • This will be achieved through immersive community engagement in schools, the development of novel training programs for re-education of staff, and graduate mentored research training.
• The MSM Center aims to develop training and awareness programs to increase diversity in the genomics workforce.
  • This includes strategic recruitment of a highly skilled computational team and the creation of portable education programs to ensure best practices are adopted across all projects and cores within the research community.
• The center will engage community stakeholders as partners in the research process.
  • This involves co-learning between community members and researchers, ensuring that research activities align with the needs and realities of the community.

Administrative Core
Co-Leads: Melissa B. Davis, Ph.D., Robert Meller, D.Phil., Nyasha Chambwe, Ph.D., Nicolas Robine, Ph.D., Michael Zody, Ph.D.

The Administrative Core (AC) has a three-tier organizational structure that reflects the core’s three pillars of services: 1- administrative, 2-data management and 3-technology development. Team personnel are trained in fiscal responsibility, grants administration, scientific and clinical data management, computational biology, and patient education. The teams work under a shared resources model for the centralization of resources across the project and core activities. The AC will serve the MSM faculty and the Morehouse Common Spirit Health clinical research initiative; including project design, budget coordination, event management, data generation, data analysis and communications.

Workforce Development Core
Co-Leads: Rick Kittles, Ph.D., Jabril Johnson, Ph.D., Tennille Leak-Johnson, Ph.D.

The WDC aims to create inclusive and supportive environments for under-represented (UR) populations in genetics and genomics by fostering representation, empowering individuals, and providing comprehensive training opportunities. The specific aims of the WDC include: 1) Increase knowledge and understanding of genomics among school-age children and their families, and promote its importance in personal health, scientific discovery, and society; 2) Enhance the academic preparedness and genomic research skills of UR undergraduate students and 3) Establish a comprehensive genomics training program to support the education and training of postdoctoral researchers in genomics, including predoctoral and medical students.

Community Engagement Core
Co-Leads: Brian Rivers, Ph.D., M.P.H. and Priscilla Pemu, M.D.

The premise of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to advance the science of community engagement toward increasing African American (AA) and Hispanic communities’ participation in genomic research. Specifically, the CEC will implement a ‘community-centered’ multi-level and multi-domain participant-centric strategy to engage AA and Hispanic communities a) in the development of culturally appropriate interventions for genomic education; b) to promote their recruitment and retention in genomics research; and c) facilitate the translations and dissemination of study results.

A model system to study the inheritability of structural racism and discrimination (SRD) through epigenomics.
Lead: Erica L. Johnson, Ph.D.

• The objectives of this project are to examine the interrelated role of both genomic and non-genomic (SRD) contributors on pregnancy outcomes and mother-infant health.
• This study tests the hypothesis that elevated SRD-related stress in African American women is associated with epigenetic signatures of inflammation and innate immune dysfunction during the preconception period, promoting a suboptimal environment for pregnancy and fetal development.
• This project offers an exceptional opportunity to understand the etiology of adverse pregnancy outcomes in AA women and identify the biomarkers and mechanisms that underlie the lasting biological effect of SRD, as these correlates impact not only at an individual level but also generational.
   

Assessing the impact of personalized reference genomes on transcriptomes
Lead: Robert Meller, D.Phil.

Specific Aims:

• Test the utility of reference genomes by determining the differential metrics of short and long read RNA seq data aligned to the GRCh38 reference genome and the T2T reference genome (CHM13).
• Determine utility of prior ancestry estimation for identifying the appropriate pangenome reference to further improve quality of short and long read RNA seq alignments, compared to the GRCh38 reference genome, across 12 HPRC reference genomes.
• Measure the QC metrics of short and long -read RNA seq data aligned to the GRCh38 reference genome compared to individualized reference genomes.