The article, “Genetic Background Limits Generalizability of Genotype-Phenotype Relationships“, by Sittig et al. (Neuron, 2016) has been recommended in F1000Prime as being of special significance in its field. Dr. Susanne Ahmari ranked the article as “Exceptional” (three stars) in her review, which can be read in full here.

F1000Prime is a curated collection of top articles recommended by the Faculty of 1000 as being significant and impactful to the fields of biology and medicine. Articles from over 3,700 peer-reviewed journals are highlighted. Learn more about F1000Prime and its features here!

April Williams has accepted an offer as a Bioinformatics Scientist at Arima Genomics, a biotechnology company based here in San Diego. Arima Genomics seeks to develop new platforms for DNA sequencing that enables identification of structural variants and assembly of haplotype resolved genomes. Congratulations and farewell, April!

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented at the Department of Pharmacology Seminar Series at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center on January 11th. His talk was titled “Using outbred mice and rats to study the genetic basis of behavioral, physiological, and expression traits”.

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented at the Addiction Affinity Group Larry Parsons Seminar Series at The Scripps Research Institute on January 13th. His talk was titled “Genetic approaches to identifying novel targets for pharmacotherapy”.

The article, “Identification of a novel, fast acting GABAergic anti-depressant”, was accepted for publication in Molecular Psychiatry. Authors include current and former Palmer Lab members (Katherine McMurray, Amanda Barkley-Levenson, Abraham Palmer) as well as collaborators Marcia Ramaker and Stephanie Dulawa.

Sandra’s project, titled “Does genetic predisposition to choose immediate rewards alter health outcomes? A genome/phenome-wide association study using electronic medical records“, was selected by UC San Diego’s Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program (FISP). This program seeks to build the interdisciplinary expertise necessary to address society’s greatest challenges and forge new intellectual enterprises, which increasingly rely on the ability to work across diverse disciplines. Click here for more information about the fellowship. Congratulations, Sandra!

The article, “Genetic Influences on ADHD Symptom Dimensions: Examination of A Priori Candidates, Genome-wide Variation, and SNP Heritability”, was accepted for publication in Neuropsychiatric Genetics. Authors include L. Cinnamon Bidwell, Joshua C. Gray, Jessica Weafer, Abraham Palmer, Harriet de Wit, and James MacKillop.

The 55th annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) was held in Hollywood, FL from December 4-8th.

Drs. Abraham Palmer and Laura Sittig presented posters. Laura also won a prestigious ACNP Travel Award. Former Palmer Lab members Camron Bryant and Clarissa Parker attended and presented posters as well.

The article, “Fine mapping of genes determining extrafusal fiber properties in murine soleus muscle”, was accepted for publication in Physiological Genomics. Authors include Andrew Carroll, Riyan Cheng, Elaina Collie-Duguid, Caroline Meharg, Michael Scholz, Steven Fiering, Jennifer Fields, Abraham Palmer, and Arimantas Lionikas.

The 2016 meeting of the NIDA Genetics Consortium was held in Washington D.C. from December 1-2. Dr. Abraham Palmer presented a talk titled “Genome-wide association study of delay discounting identifies GPM6B and demonstrates co-heritability with smoking”.