Manjot VirDee, MSC

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Manjot is an avid scientist and bioinformatician supporting researchers and collaborators with data processing pipelines, statistical analyses, and predictive modeling. His work has contributed to our understanding of foods, drugs, and toxins within cancers, neurological diseases, and developmental disorders. 

Manjot’s work in nutrition began with his undergraduate work on the chemical synthesis of analogues for vitamin A targeting the retinoid X receptor. He has since contributed to research on gene and metabolite responses to foods and toxins; and has continued to study predictive models and machine learning for large scale data analysis. 

Currently, Manjot is working out of UNC’s Nutrition Research Institute in order to produce robust analyses of genetic variants effecting nutrition in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD). To this end, Manjot is collaborating with the Canadian Fertility & Andrology Society (CFAS) to predict gene effects in young children and to set up clinical experiments to test choline and other vitamin responses.

His recent publications include:

ØVirdee, M.S., Saini, N., Kay, C.D. et al. An enriched biosignature of gut microbiota-dependent metabolites characterizes maternal plasma in a mouse model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Sci Rep 11, 248 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80093-8ØSusan M Smith, Manjot S Virdee, Judith K Eckerle, Kristin E Sandness, Michael K Georgieff, Christopher J Boys, Steven H Zeisel, Jeffrey R Wozniak, Polymorphisms in SLC44A1 are associated with cognitive improvement in children diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder: an exploratory study of oral choline supplementation, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2021;, nqab081, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab081