Dr. Choudhry did her Master's in Biotechnology from University of Pune, India in 1997 and her Doctorate from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, India in 2002. After completing her studies in India, Dr. Choudhry came to U.S. to conduct postdoctoral research in Human Genetics at Lung Biology Center, UCSF. She joined the faculty at the Center in 2006. Dr. Choudhry is a recipient of the American Thoracic Society BOLD award, the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program New Investigator award and is co-investigator on several RO1 grants. Her academic interests are in the areas of population genetics and mapping susceptibility loci for complex disorders in admixed populations.

Research Interests:

Dr. Choudhry's research focuses on the population genetics of asthma and related phenotypes in the U.S. minorities. Latino and African American populations are admixed and provide unique opportunity for epidemiological and genetic studies to understand etiology of complex disorders such as asthma. Recent advances in statistical methods and genotyping techniques have resulted in a paradigm shift in genetic association studies, making it possible to perform genome-wide association analyses using hundreds of thousands of markers. Genome-wide association study is unique in that it does not require a priori knowledge of the genes involved in the disease. An alternative approach to performing genome-wide association analysis is admixture mapping. Admixture mapping takes advantage of the extended linkage disequilibrium (LD) that exists in recently admixed populations such as Latinos and African Americans to identify genomic regions that may contribute to racial/ethnic-specific differences in disease. I am currently performing genome-wide association and admixture mapping studies in Puerto Rican subjects with severe asthma and matched controls to identity genetic risk factors associated with asthma and related phenotypes. These studies will be extended in a larger cohort of Puerto Rican, Mexican and African American asthma subjects.

Dr. Choudhry is also interested in studying the association of genetic ancestry and asthma risk in admixed populations. She and colleagues are using ancestry informative markers and applying different statistical methods to determine admixture proportions in individuals of mixed ancestry. These studies are important to identify and control for confounding that may occur in case-control genetic association studies in admixed populations due to population stratification. In addition, Dr. Choudhry is examining interactions between genetic ancestry and environmental risk factors and how these interactions may modify risk for asthma in Latino and African American populations.