Jyotsna Batra

A/Prof Batra has been continuously involved in scientific research since 2002. The focus of her PhD thesis was on asthma, which is a widespread respiratory tract ailment that affects nearly 20% of the world’s population. Her focus on large-scale population and family based studies, led to the identification of some novel features in various key genes (viz. UGRP1, NAT2, NOS2A, CCR3, CCR5, Eotaxin, MCP3, MCP1, LELP1, IL-10, IL-21, CHIA) associated with asthma. She identified individuals homozygous for CCR5∆32 deletion — the first report from the Indian subcontinent.

Most importantly, A/Prof Batra and her research group identified a novel asthma associated genetic signature — a loss of function polymorphism in the Inositol polyphosphate 4 phosphatase (INPP4A) gene. This was accomplished through a project to utilise microarray data from a mouse model of asthma to identify genetic factors responsible for causing asthma in the Indian population. Her group is the first in the world to show a link between the Inositol signalling pathway and genetic susceptibility to asthma.

A/Prof Batra has applied her knowledge on asthma genetics to various hormone dependent cancers. Studying the genetic variation in Kallikrein genes has been a major focus for her current postdoctoral fellowship, which is now being expanded to genome-wide association studies and pathway analysis. In addition to researching the relevant literature and experimental design, she is responsible for in-house DNA quality control, selection, and prioritization of genetic variants, establishment of a genetic database, and optimisation of Massarray sequenom and other polymorphism detection systems and setting up and maintaining the national and international collaborations.

A/Prof Batra is the Co-PI on a collaborative project with the UK group to replicate the hits identified from the Genome Wide Association Studies. Her collaborative research has lead to two publications in Nature Genetics.

• Eeles R...Batra J, Clements J-- Spurdle A et al (2013) Identification of 23 new prostate cancer susceptibility loci using the iCOGS custom genotyping array. Nat Genet. 2013 Apr;45(4):385-91,  391e1-2 (Cit-35)
• Patnala R, Clements J, Batra J, [2013] Candidate gene association studies: a comprehensive guide to useful in silico tools, BMC Genetics, 14, p1-11. (Cit-3)
• Batra J, et al (2007) Association of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase (iNOS) with Asthma Severity, Total Serum IgE and Blood Eosinophil Levels. Thorax; 62(1):16-22. (Cit-28)
• Batra J, Lose F, Chambers S, Gardiner R, Aitken J, Yaxley J, Clements J, Spurdle A, [2011] A replication study examining novel common single nucleotide polymorphisms identified through a prostate cancer genome-wide association study in a Japanese population, American Journal of Epidemiology, 174 (12), p1391-1395
• Batra J, Nagle CM, O'Mara T, Higgins M, Dong Y, Tan O, Lose F, Skeie LM, Srinivasan S, Bolton KL, Song H, Ramus SJ, Gayther SA, Pharoah PD, Kedda M, Spurdle A, Clements J, [2011] A Kallikrein 15 (KLK15) single nucleotide polymorphism located close to a novel exon shows evidence of association with poor ovarian cancer survival, BMC Cancer, 11, p1-11

• Dr Amanda Spurdle (QIMR)
• Prof Rosalind Eeles (ICR)
• Prof Sunita Saxena (IOP)