iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Finally, this was a team effort, and I am really grateful to have Dr. Keegan Korthauer and Dr. Michael Kobor mentoring me in this adventure! Also our wonderful collaborators, the invaluable members of the Kobor and Korthauer labs, and the titanic effort of the CHILD and PREDO teams and participants

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

🤔 What's missing? Our work used data from Canadian and Finish newborn populations only. To get a better picture, we need studies in diverse populations and other age demographics! To facilitate that, RAMEN is freely available and designed so other researchers can apply it to new datasets!

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

🧐 Why this matters? Understanding how early-life environments interact with genetics to become biologically embedded may help us: - Better understand what could cause the variation of DNA methylation sites associated with diseases - Improve how we study epigenetics in population health

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Together, we generated a catalogue that gives us a better pictures of how the inherited DNA and prenatal experiences could act together to shape the epigenome from day one!

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

😲 What did we find? 🧬 Genetics is the biggest contributor overall in the population we studied, but environmental exposures still matter! Most DNA regions are influenced by both genetics and environment in additive or interactive ways ☀️ Regions influenced only by environment are rare in cord blood

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Using cord blood data from over 1,600 newborns, we looked at regions of the genome where DNA methylation naturally varies from person to person. Then we asked how much of that variation is explained by: 🧬 Genetic differences 🌍 Prenatal environmental exposures ➕ A combination of the two above

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

We took this question to the epigenetics field and developed a new R package, RAMEN, to systematically dissect how much these factors contribute to the variability in DNA methylation.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

🔔 New paper alert! 🔔 I’m excited to share our new paper published in Genome Biology! 💡 We wanted to shed some light on a big question in human biology: what shapes a baby's biology? Inherited genetics, prenatal environmental exposures, or both? We took this question to the epigenetics field!

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Also, special shoutout to all the undergrad and high school students that presented their research in the poster sessions! It’s so inspiring to see the passion for science in younger students 🫶🏽

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

I’m very thankful with Dr. Karla Rubio and Dra. María Bringas for the invite and the incredible experience. I’m really excited to connect with the exposome community in my home country, and I’m looking forward to see this relevant field grow 🙌🏽 #EnviroEpiHealthMX

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Finally, at the conference I talked about my research developing methods to do so, particularly in the context of estimating genome-wide gene-environment interactions in DNA methylation👨🏽‍💻

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

During the pre-congress workshop, I talked about gene-environment interactions, their relevance in precision medicine, and the challenges of studying them in the postgenomic era. I highlighted promising technologies that are allowing us to study this phenomenon in omic data sets

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Last week I was invited as a keynote speaker to the 2nd International Congress EnviroEpiHealth at Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla. I had an amazing time learning about all the incredibly meaningful exposome research that is conducted in the region to address health issues 🧬🌎.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

¿Así naces o te haces? 🤔 Muy emocionado de estar la próxima semana en el club de lectura del ISCB Student Council RSG Mexico hablando de la influencia de la genética y el ambiente en la epigenética humana 🧬☀️ El registro es libre 👇🏽

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

I’m very thankful to all the organizers for making this possible and for giving young people access to FREE cutting-edge science. Thank you for letting me join your scientific revolution. And thank you for sharing your week with me, future scientists 🫶🏽.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

It was amazing to share my journey with so many younger people, help them in their next steps, and inspire them to follow their scientific dreams ⭐️.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

The rest of the students participated in one of the other 8 workshops offered, and learnt incredible stuff from young researchers from Oxford, UNAM, NASA, INAOE, Stanford, UAEM and UdeM. From engineering their own robots 🤖, to transforming their own bacteria 🦠, and studying the galaxies 🌌.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

I’m really proud of the students in my workshop, they assimilated very complex concepts in just a week! Not only the biology of aging, but coding too, and creating their first machine learning model! 👨🏽‍💻👩🏽‍💻

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Me and my students spent an amazing week learning about epigenetics, aging, and machine learning 🤓. By the end of the workshop, we trained 3 epigenetic clocks, and calculated the epigenetic accelerated aging in cancer samples! 🧬

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Last week I was honored to be an instructor at Clubes de Ciencia México and spend my week with incredibly talented scientists and young Mexicans.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

I’m really excited and honored to be part of this new cohort of @ropensci.org Champions! 🙌🏽 Looking forward to improve my skills as a software developer, contribute to the open science community, and connect with amazing Latin American leaders in research software engineering 👨🏽‍💻

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

❤️ Finally, I want to thank everyone involved in this work! Particularly, I would like to thank to the families and staff involved in the CHILD and PREDO studies. And to my amazing supervisors @keegankorthauer.bsky.social and Dr. Michael Kobor for shaping this work with me.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

🧬 We found genetics to be a central contributor to DNA methylation variability in cord blood, usually in additive and interactive combinations with the environment. This highlights the importance of incorporating genetics into DNA methylation research, particularly in early life.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

🫄🏽 We used RAMEN to answer this question in cord blood using CHILD, a nation-wide Canadian cohort. We studied the prenatal period since this window is highly sensitive! As we are developing, exposures, potentially mediated or reflected through DNA methylation, can impact our future health.

childstudy.ca

Home - CHILD Cohort Study

CHILD families: Please get in touch! If we've not heard from you since your 5-year visit or before, update your contact info with the Study and we'll send you $20. Get in touch! Calling all CHILD yout...

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

📊 Using machine learning and statistical techniques, RAMEN is able to estimate individual genetic, individual environmental, additive and interactive contributions to DNA methylation variability.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

👨🏽‍💻 In this work, we developed RAMEN, a computational tool that integrates environmental, genetic and DNA methylation data to model how the first 2 factors associate with DNA methylation variability across the genome. ericknavarrod.github.io/RAMEN/

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Lastly, I had the pleasure to present my work at the Student Symposium, where I was awarded with the second place at the best presentation competition 🎉. Thank you to the organizers and the presenters! I had such a great time, and I look forward to the next research day 💻.

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

One of my highlights was attending to Dr. Helder Nakaya Keynote. In addition to the GREAT presentation about the future of biomedical research with AI omic analyses, it was really inspiring to see the innovative bioinformatics research conducted by another Latinamerican scientist on the main stage 🌎

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Last week I attended the joint research day of the Bioinformatics, Genomic Sciences and Technology, and Interdisciplinary Oncology programs from The University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University 🧬

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Reposted by Erick Navarro-Delgado

Científico Latino @cientificolatino.com · 26/11/2024

Curious about how to ace your graduate school interviews? Join us on Tuesday, December 10th at 12pm EST for a webinar held by Maria Mercedes, a current PhD candidate. This webinar will cover tips and resources for grad school interviews! ⁠ REGISTER HERE⬇️ eventbrite.com/e/how-to-ace...

2024-25 Cientifico Latino Graudate Studnet Mentorship Initiative
Curious about how to ace graduate school interviews?
Join us December 10th 2024 from 12-1 PM ET!
Maria Mercedes, PhD Candidate Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Register for Zoom Link

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I also got to see again (now Dr.) Abraham Avelar after 7 years. He mentored me in a summer research internship during my first year of undergrad at LANGEBIO. He was the first person to introduce me to coding and here I am years later doing a PhD in Bioinformatics!

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I am hugely inspired by all the science by and for Latin Americans that is being conducted. I feel really happy to (re)connect with such a brilliant, resilient and creative community!

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Erick Navarro-Delgado @ericknavarro.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

I had the most amazing time last week presenting my PhD work at the ISCB - International Society for Computational Biology - Latin America conference.

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