Career Development Fellow

Growth and Development

Left the Unit in 2018

Work and interests

Alexia was a Research Associate in the Growth and Development programme at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. Before joining the MRC Epidemiology Unit Alexia was engaged in research in human evolutionary genetics, investigating genetic adaptations on the human genome as part of her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She left the Unit in August 2018.

In her postdoctoral research, she investigated the epigenetic/genetic, development and environment factors that cause obesity, diabetes and related metabolic disorders. Alexia’s research interest includes understanding the role of genetics/epigenetics and environment interactions in the aetiology of diseases and traits across different populations and investigating links between genetic epidemiology and human adaptations to uncover disease susceptibility genes and answer anthropological questions.

Publications

• Full publications list available on Google scholar.
• MRC Epidemiology Unit publications on the Publications Database

Selected publications:

1. Cardona, A., Pagani, L., Antao, T., Lawson, D. J., Eichstaedt, C. A., Yngvadottir, B., Shwe, M. T. T., Wee, J., Romero, I. G., Raj, S., Metspalu, M., Villems, R., Willerslev, E., Tyler-Smith, C., Malyarchuk, B. A., Derenko, M. V, & Kivisild, T. (2014). Genome-wide analysis of cold adaptation in indigenous Siberian populations. PloS One, 9(5), e98076. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098076
2. Clemente, F. J.*, Cardona, A.*, Inchley, C. E., Peter, B. M., Jacobs, G., Pagani, L., Lawson, D. J., Antão, T., Vicente, M., Mitt, M., DeGiorgio, M., Faltyskova, Z., Xue, Y., Ayub, Q., Szpak, M., Mägi, R., Eriksson, A., Manica, A., Raghavan, M., Rasmussen, M., Rasmussen, S., Willerslev, E., Vidal-Puig, A., Tyler-Smith, C., Villems, R., Nielsen, R., Metspalu, M., Malyarchuk, B., Derenko, M., & Kivisild, T. (2014). A Selective Sweep on a Deleterious Mutation in CPT1A in Arctic Populations. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 95(5), 584–589. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.09.016
   *Contributed equally