Genomic Surveillance and Pandemic Preparedness

In earning his PhD, Dr. Rajesh Pandey used a combination of functional genomics and computational tools to elucidate the role of noncoding RNA during stress response. This convinced him of the potential of the RNA regulatory repertoire and its role in shaping human evolution, health, disease states, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics. Subsequently, he has employed diverse genomic toolkits to understand and explore RNA-level regulation at different hierarchies, encompassing human, mouse, plant, fungi, bacteria genomics, and metagenomics. In addition to his research work, Dr. Pandey has been a tutor at many workshops on applications of NGS technologies, and has published peer reviewed papers in such journals as Genome Biology; Genome Biology and Evolution; Nucleic Acids Research; Journal of Cell Science; PLOS Genetics; Frontiers in Microbiology; Scientific Reports; Molecular Cell; and Clinical Genetics. His future interest lies in investigating the role of noncoding RNA in modulating human phenotypic variation and its impact on health and disease spectrum.

Section A: Pathogens and Host: Genomics perspective 1. Population level differences in COVID-19 prevalence, severity, and clinical outcome 2. Host genetics in disease susceptibility and protection 3. RNA as modulators infection outcome: Potential usage for genomic surveillance Section B: Pathogen Diversity 4. Genomic surveillance of bacterial pathogens: expanding horizons Section C: Cofactors in addition to pathogen 5. Host immune responses in COVID-19: implication for preexisting chronic systemic inflammation 6. Role of co-infections in modulating disease severities and clinical phenotypes 7. Wastewater surveillance: a quick guide to check community health Section D: Future pandemic preparedness 8. Experimental repertoire to elucidate the functional landscape of hostepathogen interactome 9. Computational means to understand and elucidate hostepathogen interaction and outcome 10. Genomic surveillance system and technologies Section E: Roadmap ahead 11. Interactions shaping the Interactome: genome surveillance inclusive of host-pathogen 12. Health informatics and data science for pandemic preparedness 13. Harsh environmental stressors of high altitude on pathogens susceptibility 14. Implications of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance development during COVID-19: questing genomic surveillance for a balancing act