The Society for Neuroscience’s 46th annual meeting was held in San Diego from November 12-16th. Amanda Barkley-Levenson, Laura Sittig, and Celine St. Pierre presented posters.

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented at the Neuroscience And Behavior Seminar series at the University of California Santa Barbara on November 4th. His talk was titled “Using quantitative behavioral genetics to understand biology”.

The 2016 annual meeting of the American Society for Human Genetics was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from October 18-22. Dr. Palmer presented at a session organized by 23andMe. His talk was titled “Studying impulsivity, alcoholism, and loneliness using in person and internet-based phenotyping”. Read the press release about the event here.

The recent article, “Genome-wide Association Study of Loneliness Demonstrates a Role for Common Variation”, has garnered significant attention in various news and social media outlets! KSWB Fox 5 interviewed Dr. Abraham Palmer about the study’s findings. Dr. Sandra Sanchez Roige penned a piece in Genétic Médica (in Spanish) discussing the results. Dr. Sanchez was also interviewed by Colombian radio station Voces RCN. It’s been retweeted many times. UCSD highlighted the study in their recent press release about being ranked the 15th best university nationally. The Huffington Post, Nature World News,

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented at the Genetic Seminar Series at Emory University School of Medicine on October 3rd. His talk was titled “Behavioral genetics: from discovery to translation”.

The P50 Center’s proposal, titled “Genome-wide mapping of gene-microbiome interaction: implication in behavior”, has been selected for funding by the UC San Diego’s Center for Microbiome Innovation. The purpose of these seed grants is to jump start microbiome research in San Diego and spark new research collaborations.

The NIDA National Center of Excellence for Genome-Wide Association Studies in Outbred Rats (P50DA037844) was founded in 2014 to utilize cutting-edge genetic methods to elucidate the genetics of drug abuse-related behaviors in rats. Dr. Abraham Palmer is the Center’s Director.

The article, “Sex-specific Linkage Scans in Opioid Dependence”, was accepted for publication in Neuropsychiatric Genetics. Other authors include Bao-Zhu Yang, Shizhong Han, Henry Kranzler, Joel Gelernter, and Abraham Palmer.

Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson received a F32 Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) for her project, titled “Epistatic Modifiers and Novel Genetic Contributions to Binge-like Drinking and Motivational Effects of Alcohol”. Her grant application received a rare impact score of a perfect 10 during its review, which was very exciting news!

The NIH & NIAAA award these fellowships to support postdoctoral individuals as they train in alcohol-related research.

Congratulations, Amanda!

The article, “Genome-wide Association Study of Loneliness Demonstrates a Role for Common Variation”, was accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Neuropsychopharmacology. Authors include current and former Palmer Lab members (Jianjun Gao, Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Amy B. Hart, Abraham A. Palmer) as well as collaborators Lea K. Davis, Lide Han, and John T. Cacioppo. Read it here!

The recent Neuron article, “Genetic Background Limits Generalizability of Genotype-Phenotype Relationships”, has garnered considerable attention on various social media outlets! No doubt helped by the accompanying whimsical video abstract, “Should Single Strains Suffice?”, starring Drs. Laura Sittig, Abraham Palmer, and Abe’s 1977 VW van. It’s been retweeted many times and covered by blogs. Altmetric ranks it in the top 5% of all scientific articles, ranked by attention or similar age.