Scientists / Our Scientists

Josh Kaminker

Senior Director Principal Scientist B CB, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Postdoc Mentor

"Genentech is a place where Bioinformatics plays a very real and profound role in making scientific discoveries that may ultimately benefit patients."

Years at Genentech

Publications

Awards & Honors

I studied Mathematics and Biology as an undergraduate, moving on to pure bench work in graduate school. With a continued interest in computational biology, I moved to a genomics group at Berkeley for my postdoc. I joined the Bioinformatics department at Genentech in 2004 with the aim of having an impact on the treatment of human diseases. I have continued to be engaged in extremely interesting and rewarding scientific projects in oncology and neuroscience. Throughout my career I have been immensely impressed by the scientific talent and collaborative nature of research at Genentech.

Postdoctoral Mentor

Sensory neurons play a fundamental role in transducing external stimuli from the periphery to the central nervous system. We are interested in using cutting edge single cell-based approaches to understand the biology of sensory neurons in pain and airway inflammation. Our work is highly collaborative and we work closely with multiple laboratories in both neuroscience and immunology, creating a unique and stimulating environment that fully integrates computational biology with bench experimentation.

Featured Publication

Untangling the brain0s neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative transcriptional responses.

Nat Commun. 2016 Apr 21;7:11295.

Srinivasan K, Friedman BA, Larson JL, Lauffer BE, Goldstein LD, Appling LL, Borneo J, Poon C, Ho T, Cai F, Steiner P, van der Brug MP, Modrusan Z, Kaminker JS, Hansen DV.

View Abstract

My group is deeply interested in using bioinformatics approaches to understand how transcriptional changes at the cellular level impact disease biology. Within Neuroscience our efforts are focused on understanding the role of such changes in driving neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s and ALS. We collaborate very closely with bench scientists to develop and pursue computational and biological hypotheses. We are also applying similar computational approaches to help define the role of different populations of sensory neurons in pain perception.

Genome-wide analysis of differential gene expression and splicing in excitatory neurons and interneuron subtypes

Journal of Neuroscience, ISSN: 02706474

Melanie Huntley; Karpagam Srinivasan; Brad Friedman; Tzu-Ming Wang; Ada X. Yee; Yuanyuan Wang; Josh Kaminker; Morgan Sheng; David Hansen; Jesse E. Hanson

Single-molecule nanopore sequencing reveals extreme target copy number heterogeneity in arylomycin-resistant mutants

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, ISSN: 00278424

Hany S. Girgis; Cory D. DuPai; Jessica Lund; Janina Reeder; Joe Guillory; Steffen Durinck; Yuxin Liang; Josh Kaminker; Peter Smith; Elizabeth Skippington

Diverse Brain Myeloid Expression Profiles Reveal Distinct Microglial Activation States and Aspects of Alzheimer's Disease Not Evident in Mouse Models

Cell Reports,

Brad Friedman; Karpagam Srinivasan; Gai Ayalon; Bill Meilandt; Han Lin; Melanie Huntley; Yi Cao; Seung-Hye Lee; Patrick Haddick; Hai Ngu; Zora Modrusan; Jessica L. Larson; Josh Kaminker; Marcel van der Brug; David Hansen

Loss of dual leucine zipper kinase signaling is protective in animal models of neurodegenerative disease

Science Translational Medicine, ISSN: 19466242 19466234

Claire Le Pichon; Bill Meilandt; Sara Dominguez; Hilda Solanoy; Han Lin; Hai Ngu; Alvin Gogineni; Arundhati Sengupta Ghosh; Zhiyu Jiang; Seung-Hye Lee; Janice Maloney; Vineela Gandham; Christine Pozniak; Bei Wang; Sebum Lee; Mike Siu; Snahel Patel; Zora Modrusan; Xingrong Liu; York Rudhard; Miriam Baca; Amy Gustafson; Josh Kaminker; Rick Carano; Eric J. Huang; Oded Foreman; Robby Weimer; Kimberly Scearce-Levie; Joe Lewcock

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Josh Kaminker

Senior Director Principal Scientist B CB, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Featured Publication

Untangling the brain0s neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative transcriptional responses.