Brittany Leger joined the Palmer lab in June 2021 as a PhD student in the Biomedical Sciences program at UCSD. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2017 with a BS in Molecular Biology, then joined Massachusetts General Hospital in the labs of Dr. Richa Saxena and Dr. James Walker. Brittany is interested in developing methods to integrate genetic data from animal model studies and human studies to reveal underlying mechanisms behind neuropsychiatric behavior. Outside of lab, Brittany enjoys hiking, figure drawing, and is currently learning to longboard.

Beverly Peng joined the Palmer lab in June 2021 as a new UCSD Bioengineering graduate  specializing in Bioinformatics. She is from Sacramento but loves the San Diego weather more. Her hobbies include painting, video editing, and learning Japanese. She is very excited get started and can’t wait to make some memories.

Welcome, Beverly!

The article, “Dissecting indirect genetic effects from peers in laboratory mice” identifies genetic loci underlying associations between the phenotype of one mouse and genotypes of its cage mates (“indirect genetic effects”). It also clarifies the relationship between loci underlying classical (“direct”) genetic effects and indirect genetic effects. The experimental data collected in the Palmer lab by Dr. Amelie Baud, Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson and undergraduate student Nilgoun Farhadi between 2017 and 2020 were critical to validate a locus identified by GWAS of indirect genetic effects. Congrats!

On June 9th, 2021, Amanda Barkley-Levenson married James Anderson in a private ceremony at the San Diego Waterfront.

Congratulations, Amanda and James!

As the Palmer lab’s focus on bioinformatics has grown, Apurva has been appointed as the leader of the bioinformatics team, which is currently expanding from 3 to 4 full time members. She will continue to divide her time between publishing papers, continuing to develop the lab’s database and bioinformatics workflows, and working with collaborators and supervising the other members of the team. Congrats Apurva!

The Quantitative Genomics of Space Biology Workshop was held on Wednesday, May 26th, 2021. Speakers discussed recent studies and tools in quantitative genetics and its potential application to targeted flight studies and space biology. See the Agenda and Speakers here.

Dr. Abraham Palmer had presented as an expert in terrestrial Quantitative Genomics with Rodents.

This workshop was organized by NASA and the NASA GeneLab.

Dr. Abraham Palmer was featured as a Distinguished Investigator Award Speaker at the 2021 IBANGS Meeting on May 15th, 2021. He discussed his several publications in the journal, Genes, Brain and Behavior, emphasizing the science and the researchers who were involved. His presentation in the awards seminar can be seen here.

Congratulations, Dr. Palmer!

The article, “Integration of Evidence across Human and Model Organism Studies: A Meeting Report”, was accepted for publication in Genes, Brain, and Behavior. This article discusses a meeting attended by a diverse panel of scientists to examine better strategies for integrating genetic, epigenetic and epigenomics data in human and model organisms to obtain a greater mechanistic insight in substance use disorders. Dr, Abraham Palmer, Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige, and Apurva Chitre are co-authors along with several others. Congratulations!

The new NIDA U01 grant, “Characterization of Tandem Repeat and Structural Variants Contributing to Addictive Behaviors in Mice and Rats”, was awarded to MPI’s: Drs. Abraham Palmer, Melissa Gymrek and Jonatahn Sebat. This grant serves to combine the complementary expertise of the MPI’s to produce a large-scale resource for analyzing the effects of complex variation on mouse and rat phenotypes.

The article, “Multivariate genomic analysis of 1.5 million people identifies genes related to addiction, antisocial behavior, and health”, has been accepted for publication in Nature Neuroscience. Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors along with several others. The article can be found here. Abraham and Sandra are also members of the Externalizing Consortium.