The new NIDA U01 Grant, “Identification of Genetic Variants that Contribute to Compulsive Cocaine Intake in Rats”, has been awarded to Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Olivier George. This grant will fund the behavioral characterization, biobanking, genotyping and GWAS analysis of 2,082 rats over 5 years. The first milestone for this grant is to implement raspberry pi monitoring systems into Dr. George’s machine-learning data pipeline.
Congratulations!
Dr. Abraham Palmer receives the 2022 Health Sciences Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Award for outstanding mentorship of future leaders in academic medicine.
Congratulations, Dr. Palmer!
The manuscript, “Parsing Genetically Influenced Risk Pathways: Genetic Loci Impact Problematic Alcohol Use Via Externalizing and Specific Risk”, was accepted for publication in Translational Psychiatry. This study investigates the use of multivariate methods to unravel variants associated with problematic alcohol use in order to characterize the pathways in which these variants operate. Drs. Abraham Palmer, Sandra Sanchez-Roige and several others are coauthors. See pre-print here!
Congratulations!
The grant titled, “Integrative Omics Center for Accelerating Neurobiological Understanding of Opioid Addiction”, has been awarded to Drs. Eric Otto Johnson, Abraham Palmer and several others. The goal of the Integrative Omics Center for Accelerating Neurobiological Understanding of Opioid Addiction (ICAN) is to identify the genetic basis for opioid addiction. Dr. Palmer is an MPI for project 3, which seeks to integrate rodent and human studies using statistical genetic approaches and rodent experiments.
Congratulations!
The manuscript, “Clinical, Environmental, and Genetic Risk Factors for Substance Use Disorders: Characterizing Combined Effects across Multiple Cohorts”, has been provisionally accepted for publication in Molecular Psychiatry. This article investigates the ability to identify individuals at higher risk for substance use disorders across four cohorts using models that include clinical/environmental risk index (CERI) and polygenic scores (PGS). Dr. Abraham Palmer is a co-author along with several others. See preprint here!
Haoyu Jia joined the Palmer lab in August 2022 as an information system analyst. He received a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC San Diego with a specialization in Intelligent Systems, Robotics, and Controls. His research interests involve applications of machine learning and data science in medical data, particularly with genomics and microbiomics. In his free time Haoyu enjoys video games, motorsports, and cosplay.
Welcome, Haoyu!
Heng Xu began his rotation in the Palmer Lab in August 2022 as a student for the BISB program. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a M.A. in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science. In his spare time, he enjoys rock climbing, biking, and spending time with his two cats.
Welcome, Heng!
The grant, “Computational methods for allele-specific expression quantification”, was awarded to Dr Seyoung Kim and Dr. Abraham Palmer. This grant is supported by the Carnegie Mellon University/National Science Foundation. The major goals of this grant is to develop computational methodology to quantify allele-specific expression from RNA-seq and genotype data to apply to intercross mouse data.
Congratulations!
Michelle Doyle joined the Palmer Lab in July 2022 at a postdoctoral scholar. She received her PhD in neuroscience from UT Health San Antonio where she studied substance use disorder-like phenotypes in rats self-administering stimulants. Michelle will be working on a joint project between Dr. Palmer and Dr. Giordano de Guglielmo studying behavioral genetics of alcohol use disorder in HS rats. In her free time, Michelle enjoys baking and is looking forward to spending time outside, especially at the zoo, with her family.
Welcome, Michelle!
Dr Abraham Palmer, Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige and Palmer lab member Elizabeth Alcantara attended the 45th Annual Research Society on Alcoholism conference in Orlando, Florida on June 25-29, 2022.
Dr. Abraham Palmer presented a talk titled, “Genetic Relationship Between Impulsivity and Heavy Drinking”. He also served as a discussant for another integrated symposium.
Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige presented a talk titled, “Genetic Liability to Alcohol Use and Misuse Correlates with Biomedical Conditions”. She also won the RSA Early Career Investigator Award.
Elizabeth Alcantara presented a poster titled, “Investigating the Role of Glyoxalase 1 as a
