The article, “Genome wide association study of body weight, body mass index, adiposity, and fasting glucose in 3,173 outbred rats,” has been accepted for publication in Obesity. Former lab members Jianjun Gao, Alexander Gileta, and Celine St. Pierre are co-authors along with current lab members Drs. Abraham Palmer and Oksana Polesskaya, Apurva Chitre, and Riyan Cheng. Other co-authors include Katie Holl, Angel Garcia Martinez, Tony George, Wenyan Han, Aidan Horvath, Alesa Hughson, Keita Ishiwari, Christopher P. King, Alexander Lamparelli, Cassandra L. Versaggi, Connor Martin, Jordan A. Tripi, Tengfei Wang, Hannah

Apurva Chitre, Bonnie Lin, and Oksana Polesskaya have been selected as 2019-20 STAR Award Recipients in recognition of and appreciation for their outstanding service and enduring contribution to the advancement of the psychiatry department’s teaching, research, clinical and public service missions.  Congratulations, Apurva, Bonnie, and Oksana!

The article, “Adapting genotyping-by-sequencing and variant calling for heterogeneous stock rats,” has been accepted for publication in G3. Former lab members Alex Gileta, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, JJ Gao, and Celine St Pierre are co-authors along with current lab members Dr. Abraham Palmer, Apurva Chitre, and Hannah Bimschleger.

Dr. Abraham Palmer was a keynote speaker on April 30th at the 2020 online PGC Meeting: Pathways to Therapeutics. He presented a talk titled “Extracting biological insights from genetic associations: application of model systems.” See the full talk here.

The article, “Genome-wide meta-analysis of problematic alcohol use in 435,563 individuals yields insights into biology and relationships with other traits,” has been accepted for publication in Nature Neuroscience. Drs. Abraham Palmer and Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors, along with Hang Zhou, Julia Sealock, Toni Clarke, Daniel Levey, Cheng Zhongshan, Boyang Li, Renato Polimanti, Rachel Kember, Rachel Smith, Johan Thygesen, Marsha Morgan, Stephen Atkinson, Mark Thursz, Mette Nyegaard, Manuel Mattheisen, Anders Børglum, Emma Johnson, Amy Justice, Andrew McQuillin, Lea Davis, Howard Edenberg, Arpana Agrawal, Henry Kranzler, and Joel Gelernter.

The article, “Sex-Dependent Associations Between Addiction-Related Behaviors and the Microbiome in Outbred Rats,” has been accepted for publication in EBioMedicine. Drs. Abraham Palmer, Amelie Baud, and Oksana Polesskaya and Apurva Chitre are co-authors, along with John Cryan and Veronica Laine Peterson. Read the article here.

The article, “The Latent Genetic Structure of Impulsivity and its Relation to Internalizing Psychopathology,” has been accepted for publication in Psychological Science. Drs. Abraham Palmer and Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors, along with Daniel Gustavson, Naomi Friedman, Pierre Fontanillas, and Sarah Elson.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, and in keeping with the policies of both UCSD and the State of California, the Palmer Lab has ceased all but essential laboratory activities and have transitioned to remote work. These changes went into effect during the second week of March. Much of our work has continued, despite the disruption. We look forward to returning to normal operations once it is safe to do so.

Denghui Chen joined the Palmer Lab in March 2020 as a Research Data Analyst. He graduated from UC San Diego with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering. He is passionate about the applications of machine learning to biomedical analysis and wishes to pursue a career in academia in the bioinformatics field. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, cooking, wine tasting, painting and short walks at Black’s Beach for sunsets. Welcome, Denghui!

Daniel Munro joined the Palmer Lab as a Postdoc in March 2020. Dan received his PhD in Quantitative and Computational Biology from Princeton University where he studied cancer mutations, gene expression patterns, and protein variants. He is working on a joint project with Pejman Mohammadi at The Scripps Research Institute to study regulatory variation in rats. Dan also enjoys graphic design and web development. Welcome, Daniel!