Elena grew up in the desert of North Central Washington. Having a tree fruit pathologist and an entomologist for parents gave Elena and her twin brother an appreciation for nature and bugs from a very early age. Elena moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington, where she graduated with a degree in Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental biology. During her time at UW, Elena worked in the molecular anthropology lab of Dr. Dan Eisenberg, where she studied genetic polymorphisms at the DRD4 locus and their association with ADHD. Over the summers, Elena went back home to work at the USDA- Agricultural Research Service. There she extracted RNA from apples and pears in order to build a working transcriptome for various tree fruits. Genetic markers were identified and assayed to predict deterioration or disease (e.g. scald) of the tree fruits at various stages in cold storage, thus making long-term fruit storage more efficient and less wasteful.

Elena also had the wonderful opportunity to spend one quarter at the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island, where she solidified her love for the oceans and decided to pursue a minor in Marine Biology. She performed independent ecological research as a Mary Gates Scholar, focusing on the aggregating anemone A. elegantissima and how their body size fluctuates with temperature increase in the intertidal.

In her final year at UW, Elena reached out to Dr. J Lee Nelson at the Fred Hutch, and was able to work as a lab aide studying a phenomenon called microchimerism and its implications in autoimmune disease and cancer. Microchimerism is the bi-directional transfer of cells between a mother and her fetus during pregnancy. In rare cases, cells from an older sibling or twin may also be transferred to the fetus during gestation. Elena contributed to an exciting project that investigated leukemia patients who were the recipients of an umbilical cord blood transplantation. When cells from the mother of the donor (i.e. the baby’s mom who provided the umbilical cord) were present IN THE LEUKEMIA PATIENT post-transplant, 0% relapse was observed. These findings may encourage oncologists to consider the benefits of using HLA-matched cord blood transplantation as a potential therapy for patients with AML and ALL.

Elena worked in the Nelson lab for another year and a half following her graduation, and then she joined the Malik lab in the fall of 2020. Here, she studies rapidly evolving centromeric histone (Cid) paralogs in the Drosophila Montium species subgroup. She hopes to elucidate the localization and functional consequence of each Cid paralog, and potentially gain insight into the paradoxical nature of rapidly evolving, yet essential, centromeric histone proteins.

Elena plans to apply for graduate programs in the biomedical sciences for a 2022 admission date. Her dream job would combine her passion for human biomedical research with her love of marine biology.

When not in the lab, Elena is usually outside running, hiking, and attempting to identify any plants or marine critters that she comes across.  She also enjoys playing and creating music, and dabbling in culinary experiments when the mood strikes.

Click here for Elena Kahn's curriculum vitae

Publications:

Kanaan SB, Delaney C, Milano F, Scaradavou A, Besien KV, Allen J, Lambert NC, Cousin E, Thur LA, Kahn E, Forsyth AM, Sensoy O, Nelson JL. “Cord blood maternal microchimerism following unrelated cord blood transplantation”. Bone Marrow Transplant. 01 Dec 2020. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33257776.

Honaas, Loren, and Elena Kahn. “A practical examination of RNA isolation methods for European pear (Pyrus communis).” BMC Research Notes, vol. 10, no. 1, 29 June 2017.