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 are 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
Dr. Abraham Palmer was a speaker at the 2022 Annual Behavioral Genetics Association (BGA) Meeting in Los Angeles. He presented a talk titled “Methods for transferring polygenic signals between species” on June 25th, 2022. See details here.
The manuscript, “Cross-ancestry genomic research: time to close the gap”, has been accepted for publication in Neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige are authors along with several others.
Congrats!
Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige has been promoted to Associate Adjunct Professor. The appointment will begin on 7/1/2022.
Congratulations, Sandra!
Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Oksana Polesskaya attended the 23rd Annual Genes, Brain and Behavior meeting at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, May 23-27th, 2022.
Dr. Palmer gave a talk titled “Overview of the NIDA center for genetic studies of drug abuse in outbred rats”, at the Genetic studies of drug addiction-related traits in outbred rats symposium, which was chaired by Dr. Polesskaya.
See details here!
Drs Abraham Palmer and Sandra Sanchez-Roige receives a 2022-23 pilot grant award for their research on how age will influence wisdom. This grant will fund the first genetic study of wisdom using a rating scale based on a neurobiological model of wisdom; the proposed wisdom scale (SD-WISE) will assess the genetic signature of wisdom from a population of 500,000 subjects from 23andMe.
Congratulations!
The manuscript, “Genetic characterization of outbred Sprague Dawley rats and utility for genome-wide association studies”, has been accepted for publication in PLOS Genetics. A genome wide association study (GWAS) was performed to characterize the genetic differences of Sprague Dawley (SD) rats sourced from Charles River Laboratories and Harlan Sprague Dawley Inc. Extensive population structure between and within each vendor was revealed. Current Palmer lab members, Dr. Abraham Palmer and Apurva Chitre, are authors. Former Palmer lab members, Dr. Alex Gileta, Celine St. Pierre, Elizabeth V. Joyce, Rachael Maguire, Africa McLeod,
