Angela Brooks is an Assistant Professor of

Biomolecular Engineering Biomolecular engineering is the application of engineering principles and practices to the purposeful manipulation of molecules of biological origin. Biomolecular engineers integrate knowledge of biological processes with the core knowledge of chemi ...

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

. She is a member of the Genomics Institute.

Early life and education

After watching

Gattaca ''Gattaca'' is a 1997 American dystopian science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol in his List of directorial debuts, feature directorial debut. It stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman with Jude Law, Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Go ...

in 1997, Brooks was inspired to study

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

. She studied

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

, where she specialized in

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

. She became interested in

alternative splicing Alternative splicing, alternative RNA splicing, or differential splicing, is an alternative RNA splicing, splicing process during gene expression that allows a single gene to produce different splice variants. For example, some exons of a gene ma ...

, and decided to focus on this for her doctoral studies. She moved to

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

for her graduate program, working with Steven E. Brenner. During her doctorate, she worked on Modencode, a project which looked to create an encyclopedia of the elements in the

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (an insect of the Order (biology), order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly", "pomace fly" ...

genomes. She created JuncBASE (junction-based analysis of splicing events), a program which analysed high-throughput sequencing data generated. Brooks was a postdoctoral fellow at the

Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Dana–Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) is a comprehensive cancer treatment and research center in Boston, Massachusetts. Dana-Farber is the founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard's Comprehensive Cancer Center designated ...

, where she worked with

Matthew Meyerson Matthew Langer Meyerson (born June 4, 1963) is an American pathologist and the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is also director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Inst ...

. Here she studied the cancerous effects of mutation in

U2 small nuclear RNA auxiliary factor 1 Splicing factor U2AF 35 kDa subunit is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''U2AF1'' gene. Function This gene belongs to the splicing factor SR family of genes . U2AF1 is a subunit of the U2 Auxiliary Factor complex alongside a larger ...

( U2AF1) and

SF3B1 Splicing factor 3B subunit 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''SF3B1'' gene. Function This gene encodes subunit 1 of the splicing factor 3b protein complex. Splicing factor 3b, together with splicing factor 3a and U2 spliceosom ...

. U2AF1 is frequently mutated in

adenocarcinoma of the lung Adenocarcinoma of the lung is the most common type of lung cancer, and like other forms of lung cancer, it is characterized by distinct cellular and molecular features. It is classified as one of several non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC), to d ...

and

myeloid leukemia Myeloid leukemia is a type of leukemia affecting myeloid tissue. Types include: * Acute myeloid leukemia: A cancer of the myeloid line of blood cells, characterized by the rapid growth of myeloblasts that build up in the bone marrow and blood and ...

, and

lymphoid leukemia Lymphoid leukemias are a group of leukemias affecting circulating lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. The lymphocytic leukemias are closely related to lymphomas of the lymphocytes, to the point that some of them are unitary disease entities t ...

Research and career

Brooks set up an

lab at

in 2015. She uses

nanopore sequencing Nanopore sequencing is a third generation approach used in the sequencing of biopolymers — specifically, polynucleotides in the form of DNA or RNA. Nanopore sequencing allows a single molecule of DNA or RNA be sequenced without PCR amplif ...

for full length

RNA sequencing RNA-Seq (named as an abbreviation of RNA sequencing) is a technique that uses next-generation sequencing to reveal the presence and quantity of RNA molecules in a biological sample, providing a snapshot of gene expression in the sample, also kn ...

. In 2016 she was awarded a grant from the Santa Cruz Cancer Benefit Group (SCCBG) to examine genetic changes in lung cancer that lead to altered gene processing. She co-lead the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) RNA working group and is the corresponding author on the PCAWG RNA paper. She also presented her PCAWG work at the AACR Annual Meeting in 2017 as part of a Major Symposia. On March 2, 2020, she was appointed the Diversity Director for the UCSC Genomics Institute. In 2020 she received two grants to build diversity at the UCSC Genomics Institute including the UC Santa Cruz Training Program In Genomic Sciences and UCSC Research Mentoring Internship Program: An Initiative to Increase Diversity and Inclusion in Genomics Research.

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include; * 2017 The Scientist One to Watch * 2018

Women in Science and Engineering Award * 2018

Pew Scholar The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. Pew's stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, and invigorating civic life". ...

* 2019 Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program Award *2020 NIH/NIGMS R35 Maximizing Investigators' Research Award

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, Angela Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of California, Santa Cruz faculty University of California, San Diego alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni American geneticists American women geneticists 21st-century American women scientists 21st-century American biologists Scientists from California