Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and will be starting in 2022. Her lab will work on understanding the genetic basis of alcohol use disorder and excessive drinking by translating novel hits from human GWAS into mouse models for comprehensive follow-up and validation.

Congratulations, Amanda!

Gabe Barrero joined the Palmer lab in November 2021 as an information system analyst with a Bachelor of arts in Biology. He is passionate about data science and its application in international development. In his free time Gabe enjoys Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, biking, cooking and ice cream.

Welcome, Gabe!

The article, “Evaluation of Delay Discounting as a Transdiagnostic Research Domain Criteria Indicator in 1388 General Community Adults” has been accepted for publication in Psychological Medicine. Drs. Abraham Palmer and Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors along with several others. Congratulations!

Final citation: Levitt, E. E., Oshri, A., Amlung, M., Ray, L.A., Sanchez-Roige, S., Palmer, A.A., & MacKillop, J. (in press) Evaluation of Delay Discounting as a Transdiagnostic Research Domain Criteria Indicator in 1388 General Community Adults. Psychological Medicine.

The article, “Polygenic transcriptome risk scores (PTRS) can improve portability of polygenic risk scores across ancestries”, has recently been accepted for publication in Genome Biology. This study explores the use of polygenic transcriptome risk scores (PTRS) to improve the prediction of transcriptomic data in underrepresented populations. Dr. Abraham Palmer and several others coauthored this article. See the article here. Congratulations, Dr. Palmer!

The article, “Genes identified in rodent studies of alcohol intake are enriched for heritability of human substance use”, has been accepted for publication in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. This article discusses the use of GeneWeaver to enrich rodent alcohol & nicotine gene-sets for heritability of substance use traits in humans. Dr. Abraham Palmer and several others coauthored this article. See article here. Congratulations!

The 7th Annual Retreat for the NIDA Center for GWAS in Outbred Rats was held on 11/4/2021. Investigators from the P50 Center, as well as PIs of the grants affiliated with the Center, gave short talks about their projects, followed by discussion. A closed advisory board meeting was held the following day.

Master’s Student Elizabeth Alcantara was recently awarded the BrightSpinnaker Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to students who demonstrate a commitment to community service and provides funding for the master’s program at UCSD.

Congratulations, Liz!

The article, “Analysis of independent cohorts of outbred CFW mice reveals novel loci for behavioral and physiological traits and identifies factors determining reproducibility“, has been accepted for publication in G3. This study identifies the factors that impact reproducibility of GWAS studies in mice and demonstrates methods to obtain robust results from mapping complex traits in GWAS studies.

Congrats!

Elizabeth Alcantara joined the Palmer Lab in December of 2020 as an undergraduate volunteer and recently graduated from UCSD with a B.S in Neurobiology. She has recently been admitted to the UCSD BS/MS program and is now a Graduate Student Researcher in the lab. She will be focusing her work on investigating the relationship between Glo1 and drug addiction. In her free time, she enjoys eating out and trying new foods, reading, binge watching shows, and playing with her two cats.

Welcome, Liz!

Han Chen Joined the Palmer lab in September of 2021, he recently graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a B.S in Bioinformatics. His hobbies are playing tennis, cooking, and drawing.

Welcome, Han!