The Palmer lab wishes everyone a safe and happy holiday season. The lab will be (mostly) closed December 24, 2020 to January 1, 2021. Here’s to a better new year!

Dr. Abraham Palmer has been named a Fellow (i.e., senior or honorary member) in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his contributions to psychiatry. Congratulations, Abe!

Dr. Amelie Baud, a former Palmer lab postdoc, will start a Research Group Leader position at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain in September 2021. Her lab will work on indirect genetic effects (genetic effects arising from heritable traits of social partners, when those traits influence the phenotype of interest) and host-microbiome interactions. She will keep collaborating with Dr. Palmer and the NIDA P50 Consortium. Congratulations, Amelie!

Katarina Cohen joined the Palmer Lab in October 2020 as a laboratory assistant. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Biology. She is interested in the medicinal application of biochemistry and hopes to pursue research in the future. She enjoys drawing and watching Westerns. Welcome, Katarina!

The article, “Modeling epistasis in mice and yeast using the proportion of two or more distinct genetic backgrounds: evidence for ‘polygenic epistasis'”, has been accepted for publication in PLOS Genetics. Former Palmer lab member, Natalia Gonzales, and current lab member, Dr. Palmer, are co-authors on the paper. The full citation is as follows:

Rau CD, Gonzales NM, Bloom JS, Park D, Ayroles J, Palmer AA, Lusis AJ, Zaitlen N. Modeling epistasis in mice and yeast using the proportion of two or more distinct genetic backgrounds: evidence for “polygenic epistasis”. PLoS Genetics, in press.

Amelie Baud, a Visiting Scholar in the Palmer lab, is moving. Farewell, Amelie!

Dr. Palmer is a co-investigator on the NIH/NIDA grant received by Dr. Telese, entitled “Decoding the grammar of transcriptional enhancers regulating different stages of opioid use disorder.”
This project’s goal is to investigate transcriptional regulatory networks underlying different stages of the opioid use disorder, using capped small (cs)RNA-seq method of transcriptional initiation profiling in combination with other sensitive profiling techniques.

The article, “Content and performance of the MiniMUGA genotyping array, a new tool to improve rigor and reproducibility in mouse research,” has been accepted for publication in Genetics. Former Palmer lab postdoc, Yu-yu Ren, and current lab member, Dr. Abraham Palmer, are co-authors on the paper.

Dr. Palmer is a co-investigator on the NIH/NIDCD grant received by Dr. Friedman, entitled “The genetic basis for age-related hearing loss in outbred mice.” The goal of this project is to study genetics of the age-related hearing impairment using GWAS in outbred CFW mice.