The recently published article, “Identification of a novel, fast acting GABAergic anti-depressant“, has garnered significant attention in various news and social media outlets! San Diego’s CW6 news interviewed Dr. Abraham Palmer about the study’s findings. UCSD highlighted the study in its recent press release. It was featured in Drug Development News’ May 2017 issue (page six). The Sacramento Bee also covered it. It’s been retweeted many times.

Drs. Amanda Barkley-Levenson and Sandra Sanchez-Roige have each received a Young Investigator Travel Award to attend the Genes, Brian and Behavior 2017 meeting of the International Behavioral and Neural Genetics Society (IBANGS) in Madrid, Spain. These awards will help defray the costs of their travel and lodging and are generously supported by NIAAA. Congratulations both!

The 2017 meetings of the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Seminar (GRS) for Quantitative Genetics & Genomics was held in Galveston, TX from February 25th – March 3rd.

Graduate student Alex Gileta and post-doc Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige attended both sessions and presented posters.

Dr. Riyan Cheng has joined the Palmer Lab! He is our new Associate Project Scientist. Dr. Cheng was recently a Research Fellow in Justin Borevitz’s lab at The Australian National University, where he developed novel statistical methods to perform genome-wide association studies for various phenotypes to discover genetic variants. He previously completed a post-doc in the Palmer Lab from 2008 to 2012. Welcome, Riyan!

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!