Speaker: Dr Ling Xiao (Harvard Medical School) Abstract: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a complex disease and the molecular mechanisms leading to AF in the general population remain unknown. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified over 100 genetic loci associated with AF. However, it is still a big challenge to identify cellular programs through which genes from AF-associated variants and genetic loci modulate the risk for AF. To address this challenge, we systematically applied high-content imaging assay to analyze AF genes in a human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) derived atrial cardiomyocyte (aCMs) cell model. We performed CRISPR based perturbations to delete AF candidate genes in Cas9 expressing hPSC derived aCMs and used Cell Painting pipeline to analyze atrial cell structures obtained with high-content imaging. Our results indicate cardiomyocyte structural abnormalities contribute to AF pathogenesis. Understanding the functions of candidate AF genes at the GWAS loci have the potential to uncover novel biological mechanisms and potential drug targets for novel therapeutics. About the speaker: Dr Ling Xiao is an Instructor in investigation at Cardiovascular Research Center of Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on leveraging large human genetic dataset and state-of-the-art functional genomic approaches to study cardiovascular diseases.