
Paivi Elisabeth Pajukanta
Department Vice Chair, Human Genetics, Human Genetics, University of California Los Angeles
Professor, Human Genetics, University of California Los Angeles
Gonda Center
Los Angeles, CA 90095 Gonda Center
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Fax Number:
310-794-5446
Lab Number:
310-794-9802
Affiliations
Member, Bioinformatics GPB Home Area, Cell & Developmental Biology GPB Home Area
Research Interests
Biography
Paivi Pajukanta, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Human Genetics at UCLA. Her research group is identifying biological mechanisms of DNA variants and genes involved in complex cardiovascular and metabolic disorders using integrative genomics approaches. Her research aims to discover gene-environment interactions and context-specific transcriptional and epigenomic effects contributing to cardiometabolic disorders in Mexicans and Europeans by integrating transcriptomics, epigenomics, and genomics data with deep clinical and histology-based phenotype and electronic medical record data. Dr. Pajukanta is especially interested in single cell RNA-sequencing studies of metabolic tissues to decompose cell-type proportions and cell-type specific expression of genes and their connections to cardiometabolic traits; as well as in genomic studies of the admixed Mexican population that has been underrepresented in genomic studies despite their high predisposition to obesity, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemias, fatty liver disease, and other cardiometabolic disorders. Dr. Pajukanta has served as a principal investigator in several NIH R01 grants and as a Project Leader of an NIH PPG grant. She has trained multiple undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students; taught graduate level courses; and served as a problem-based learning tutor of medical students. She is also the Director of the Genetics and Genomics Home Area of graduate education at UCLA; the Vice Chair in the Department of Human Genetics at UCLA; and the Director of Cardiometabolic Genomics at the Institute for Precision Health at UCLA.
Publications
- Presson AP, Sobel EM, Pajukanta P, Plaisier C, Weeks DE, Aberg K, Papp JC. Merging microsatellite data: enhanced methodology and software to combine genotype data for linkage and association analysis.. BMC bioinformatics, 2008.
- Pajukanta P. Do DNA sequence variants in ABCA1 contribute to HDL cholesterol levels in the general population?. The Journal of clinical investigation, 2004.
- Pajukanta P, Lilja HE, Sinsheimer JS, Cantor RM, Lusis AJ, Gentile M, Duan XJ, Soro-Paavonen A, Naukkarinen J, Saarela J, Laakso M, Ehnholm C, Taskinen MR, Peltonen L. Familial combined hyperlipidemia is associated with upstream transcription factor 1 (USF1).. Nature genetics, 2004.
- Lusis AJ, Mar R, Pajukanta P. Genetics of atherosclerosis.. Annual review of genomics and human genetics, 2004.
- Pajukanta P, Allayee H, Krass KL, Kuraishy A, Soro A, Lilja HE, Mar R, Taskinen MR, Nuotio I, Laakso M, Rotter JI, de Bruin TW, Cantor RM, Lusis AJ, Peltonen L. Combined analysis of genome scans of dutch and finnish families reveals a susceptibility locus for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol on chromosome 16q.. American journal of human genetics, 2003.