Dr. Thornton is Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Washington (UW) and an Affiliate Investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Thornton's research involves the development and application of statistical methods for the analysis of large-scale genomic data for the identification of genetic variants that influence complex diseases and quantitative traits. Currently, Dr. Thornton's collaborative research is largely focused on using statistical methods to identify novel genetic variants for complex traits in ancestrally diverse populations, including underrepresented minority populations in the U.S., including African Americans, Latinos, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations. Dr. Thornton currently serves as a lead statistician and co-investigator for Hispanic Community Health Study (HCHS)/Study of Latinos (SOL), and this cohort was recently included in the multi-cohort Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) II study.
Recent Publications
- Choi, SH, Jurgens, SJ, Xiao, L, Hill, MC, Haggerty, CM, Sveinbjörnsson, G, Morrill, VN, Marston, NA, Weng, LC, Pirruccello, JP et al.. Sequencing in over 50,000 cases identifies coding and structural variation underlying atrial fibrillation risk. Nat Genet 2025; 57 (3): 548-562. PubMed PMID:40050430 .
- Li, X, Chen, H, Selvaraj, MS, Van Buren, E, Zhou, H, Wang, Y, Sun, R, McCaw, ZR, Yu, Z, Jiang, MZ et al.. A statistical framework for multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies. Nat Comput Sci 2025; 5 (2): 125-143. PubMed PMID:39920506 .
- Liu, H, Abedini, A, Ha, E, Ma, Z, Sheng, X, Dumoulin, B, Qiu, C, Aranyi, T, Li, S, Dittrich, N et al.. Kidney multiome-based genetic scorecard reveals convergent coding and regulatory variants. Science 2025; 387 (6734): eadp4753. PubMed PMID:39913582 .
- Little, A, Zhao, N, Mikhaylova, A, Zhang, A, Ling, W, Thibord, F, Johnson, AD, Raffield, LM, Curran, JE, Blangero, J et al.. General Kernel Machine Methods for Multi-Omics Integration and Genome-Wide Association Testing With Related Individuals. Genet Epidemiol 2025; 49 (1): e22610. PubMed PMID:39812506 .
- Sun, KY, Bai, X, Chen, S, Bao, S, Zhang, C, Kapoor, M, Backman, J, Joseph, T, Maxwell, E, Mitra, G et al.. Author Correction: A deep catalogue of protein-coding variation in 983,578 individuals. Nature 2025; 637 (8047): E26. PubMed PMID:39779867 PubMed Central PMC11754088.
- Grinde, KE, Browning, BL, Reiner, AP, Thornton, TA, Browning, SR. Adjusting for principal components can induce collider bias in genome-wide association studies. PLoS Genet 2024; 20 (12): e1011242. PubMed PMID:39680601 PubMed Central PMC11684764.
- Kullo, IJ, Conomos, MP, Nelson, SC, Adebamowo, SN, Choudhury, A, Conti, D, Fullerton, SM, Gogarten, SM, Heavner, B, Hornsby, WE et al.. The PRIMED Consortium: Reducing disparities in polygenic risk assessment. Am J Hum Genet 2024; 111 (12): 2594-2606. PubMed PMID:39561770 PubMed Central PMC11639095.
- Ziyatdinov, A, Mbatchou, J, Marcketta, A, Backman, J, Gaynor, S, Zou, Y, Joseph, T, Geraghty, B, Herman, J, Watanabe, K et al.. Joint testing of rare variant burden scores using non-negative least squares. Am J Hum Genet 2024; 111 (10): 2139-2149. PubMed PMID:39366334 PubMed Central PMC11480795.
- Gaynor, SM, Joseph, T, Bai, X, Zou, Y, Boutkov, B, Maxwell, EK, Delaneau, O, Hofmeister, RJ, Krasheninina, O, Balasubramanian, S et al.. Yield of genetic association signals from genomes, exomes and imputation in the UK Biobank. Nat Genet 2024; 56 (11): 2345-2351. PubMed PMID:39322778 PubMed Central PMC11549045.
- Rodriguez-Flores, JL, Khalid, S, Parikshak, N, Rasheed, A, Ye, B, Kapoor, M, Backman, J, Sepehrband, F, Gioia, SAD, Gelfman, S et al.. NOTCH3 p.Arg1231Cys is markedly enriched in South Asians and associated with stroke. Nat Commun 2024; 15 (1): 8029. PubMed PMID:39271666 PubMed Central PMC11399414.
