Seminar: Karolina Kuliś
During our latest departmental seminar, our PhD student Karolina Kuliś presented work on “Distinguishing cases from controls in type 1 diabetes: comparison of gene-based and SNP-based classification methods,” tackling a challenge that continues to affect both research and clinical understanding of T1D. This is part of her doctoral project conducted in collaboration between Silesian University of Technology and Oakland University .
Type 1 diabetes remains a serious and still not fully understood disease, in which misclassification is, unfortunately, not uncommon.
This study attempted to address this issue by creating a classifier for cases and control groups and identifying a genetic signature that most effectively distinguishes individuals with type 1 diabetes from healthy controls. Importantly, the results were also biologically meaningful, as confirmed by functional analysis of selected genes.
The presentation also outlined various approaches to polygenic risk scores (PRS), explaining both their rationale and practical limitations. Noteworthy is the clear advantage of gene-based classifiers over traditional SNP-based methods, pointing to a potentially more reliable direction for future research.
This work not only deepens our understanding of the genetics of type 1 diabetes but also highlights the potential of gene-level approaches to improve diagnostic precision.
