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Human BiologyVolume 84 | Issue 3 Article 92012Where Are They Now? An Update on the CareerDevelopment of Recent AAAG Student PrizeWinnersHuman Biology EditorsFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiolRecommended CitationEditors, Human Biology (2012) "Where Are They Now? An Update on the Career Development of Recent AAAG Student PrizeWinners," Human Biology: Vol. 84: Iss. 3, Article 9.Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol84/iss3/9Where Are They Now? An Update on the Career Development of RecentAAAG Student Prize WinnersThis open access article is available in Human Biology: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol84/iss3/9Where Are They Now? An Update on the Career Developmentof Recent AAAG Student Prize WinnersHolly M. Mortensen, Ph.D.Since winning the 2004 AAAG student prize in Tempe, AZ, my career has takensome interesting turns that have led me away from academia to a career with theUS Federal government at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Icompleted my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park in2008. My dissertation project started as a collaboration between my MA advisorat Stanford (Joanna Mountain) and my Ph.D. advisor at UMD, College Park(Sarah Tishkoff) to look at genetic variation amongst linguistically diverseTanzanian populations, and my presentation of this topic earned the AAAGstudent prize (Knight et al. 2003; Tishkoff et al. 2007). After returning fromTanzania in 2002, I decided to look at genetic variation in the N-acetyltransferaseloci, three drug metabolizing enzyme loci implicated in the metabolism of theanti-tuberculosis drug isoniazid, in these populations and other African andglobal population (Mortensen et al. 2011). My desire to become more proficientin the analysis of large datasets led me away from the bench to a postdoctoralfellowship at the EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology workingwith Richard Judson. For my postdoctoral project, I was asked to characterize thegenes and biological pathways targeted by the hundreds of in vitro high-throughputassays carried out by the EPA as part of the ToxCast Project (Judson et al. 2010,2012). After having our first daughter in 2011, I returned to work in another area ofthe EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD). I am currently working asa Research Bioinformatician with the Research Cores Unit of the National Healthand Environmental Effects Laboratory, and have happily moved back to the analysisof genomic and proteomic data, where I am working to establish best practices ofanalysis of next generation sequence data within the EPA’s ORD.Knight, A., P. A. Underhill, H. M. Mortensen, L. A. Zhivotovsky, B. M. Henn, M. Ruhlen, and J. L.Mountain. 2003. African Y chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides insight into thehistory of click languages. Curr. Biol. 13:464–473.Judson, R.S., K. A. Houck, R. J. Kavlock, T. B. Knudsen, M. T. Martin, H. M. Mortensen, D. M. Reif,D. M. Rotroff, I. Shah, A. M. Richard, and D. J. Dix. 2010. In vitro screening ofenvironmental chemicals for targeted testing prioritization: the ToxCast project. Environ.Health Perspect. 118:485–492.Judson, R.S., H. M. Mortensen, I. Shah, T. B. Knudsen, and F. Elloumi 2012. Using pathway modulesas targets for assay development in Xenobiotic screening. Mol. Biosyst. 8:531–542.Mortensen, H.M., F. A. Reed, G. Lema, A. Froment, J. Bodo, M. Ibrahim, T. B. Nyambo, S. A. Omar,and S. A. Tishkoff. 2011. Characterization of genetic variation and natural selection at theN-Acetyltransferase (NAT) genes in global human populations. Pharmacogenomics12:1545–1558.Tishkoff, S. A., M. K. Gonder, B. M. Henn, H. M. Mortensen, N. Fernandopulle, C. Gignoux, G.Lema, T. B Nyambo, P. A. Underhill, U. Ramakrishnan, F. A. Reed, and J. L. Mountain.2007. History of click-speaking populations of Africa inferred from mtDNA and Ychromosome genetic variation, Mol. Biol. Evol. 24: 2180–2195.Mark Zlojutro, Ph.D.I received the AAAG student prize in 2004 for my presentation entitled“Mitochondrial DNA variation in Yakutia: The genetic structure of an expandingpopulation.” This study explored the molecular signatures associated withdemographic expansion by examining mtDNA variation in the Yakuts (Zlojutroet al. 2009b), a Native Siberian population believed to have originated fromCentral Asia during the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 12th century and rapidlyexpanding in recent centuries under Russian governance. This research formedthe basis for my master’s thesis at the University of Kansas, which was honoredwith the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools & UMI DissertationPublishing’s Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award in 2007. For my Ph.D.dissertation topic, my focus remained in population genetics and the reconstruc-tion of human history via phylogeographic methods, but shifting to the mtDNAand Y-chromosome variation of the Aleuts (Zlojutro et al. 2006, 2009a), thenative inhabitants of the Aleutian archipelago off the southwest coast of Alaska,and its implications for the peopling of the New World. This study enabled meto finally participate in fieldwork, collecting DNA samples with my advisor, Dr.Michael Crawford, in the eastern Aleutian Islands in 2005 and 2006, and thus beanointed as a “true anthropologist”! I graduated with my Ph.D. from Kansas in2008 and now conduct research at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute inSan Antonio, working with Dr. Laura Almasy on the genetic architecture ofpsychiatric disorders, specifically alcohol dependence and schizophrenia(Zlojutro et al. 2011).Zlojutro, M., N. Manz, M. Rangaswamy, X. Xuei, L. Flury-Wetherill, D. Koller, L. Beirut, R.Cloninger, A. Goate, V. Hesselbrock, S. Kuperman, J. Nurnberger, J. Rice, M. Schucki, T.Foroud, H. J. Edenberg, B. Porjesz, and L. Almasy. 2011. Genome-wide association study oftheta band event-related oscillations identifies serotonin receptor gene HTR7 influencing riskof alcohol dependence. Am. J. Med. Genet. 156B:44–58.Zlojutro, M., R. Rubicz, and M. H. Crawford. 2009a. Mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomevariation in five eastern Aleut communities: evidence for genetic substructure in the Aleutpopulation. Ann. Hum. Biol. 36:511–526.Zlojutro, M., R. Rubicz, E. Devor, V. Spitsyn, K. Wilson, and M. H. Crawford. 2006. Geneticstructure of the Aleuts and circumpolar populations based on mitochondrial DNA sequence:a synthesis. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 129:446–464.Zlojutro, M., L. A. Tarskaia, M. Sorensen, J. J. Snodgrass, W. R. Leonard, and M. H. Crawford.2009b. Coalescent Simulations of Yakut mtDNA Diversity Suggest Small Founding Popu-lation. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 139:474–482.Ellen E. Quillen, Ph.D.After winning the 2010 student prize for “The role of selection-nominatedcandidate genes in determining Indigenous American skin pigmentation” (seeQuillen et al. 2012a), I completed my Ph.D. in anthropology under Mark Shriverat Penn State in December of 2010 and began my postdoctoral work with LauraAlmasy at Texas Biomedical Research Institute. I have continued my work onskin pigmentation in Indigenous-American populations (Quillen and Shriver2011), with particular interest in the genetics of tanning and burning in responseto ultra-violet radiation. Additionally, I have expanded my interests to includebiomedical research on the genetic and epigenetic underpinnings of heart disease,schizophrenia, and alcoholism. Uniting these fields is my current focus, applyingstatistical methods to disentangle the genetic contributors to human variation inadmixed populations. Recent efforts have focused on iris texture (Quillen et al.2011), paraoxonase activity (Quillen et al 2012b), and the relationship of geneticand phenotypic variation to self-identified ethnicity in Colombia. I joined theAAAG outreach committee, serving as the chair for the past year, which hasdeveloped new networking events at the AAPA and ASHG meetings. I am alsothe founding editor of the Human Biology Room of the Nature EducationKnowledge Project Biological Anthropology section.Quillen, E. E., M. Bauchet, A. W. Bigham, M. E. Delgado-Burbano, F. X. Faust, Y. C. Klimentidis,X. Mao, M. Stoneking, and M. D. Shriver. 2012a. OPRM1 and EGFR contribute to skinpigmentation differences between Indigenous Americans and Europeans. Hum. Genet. Epubahead of print, DOI: 10.1007/s00439-011-1135-1.Quillen, E. E., J. S. Guiltinan, S. Beleza. J. Rocha, R. W. Pereira, and M. D. Shriver. 2011. Iris texturetraits show associations with iris color and genomic ancestry. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 23:567–569.Quillen, E. E., D. L. Rainwater, T D. Dyer, M. A. Carless, J. E. Curran, M. P. Johnson, H. H. H.Go¨ring, S. A. Cole, S. Rutherford, J. W. MacCluer, E. K. Moses, J. Blangero, L. Almasy, andM. C. Mahaney. 2012b. Novel associations of non-structural loci with paraoxonase activity.J. Lipids, in press.Quillen, E. E. and M. D. Shriver. 2011. Unpacking human evolution to find the genetic determinantsof human skin pigmentation. J. Invest. Dermatol. 131:E5–E7.

Where Are They Now? An Update on the Career Development of Recent AAAG Student Prize Winners

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Where Are They Now? An Update on the Career Development of Recent AAAG Student Prize Winners

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