Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson gave a talk titled, “Glyoxalase 1 involvement in ethanol reward sensitivity and ethanol withdrawal” at the International Behavioral and Neural Genetics Society meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dr. Abraham Palmer was featured in Triton magazine in the article, “The genetics of risk.” He discusses his recent article published in Nature Genetics.
Triton magazine is published by UC San Diego Alumni. It appears in print three times a year: fall, winter and spring.
Dr. Yu-yu Ren has finished his postdoc in the Palmer lab and has accepted a position as the head Bioinformatics Scientist at AnaptysBio in San Diego, CA. The Palmer Lab will miss him and wishes him the best of luck!
Dr. Amanda Barkey-Levenson received the RSA Junior Investigator Travel Award for travel to the annual Research Society on Alcoholism meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 22nd-26th.
Congratulations, Amanda!
Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige was recently promoted from post-doctoral scholar to Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD. Funded by the TRDRP New Investigator Award, Sandra will derive psychiatric phenotypes from electronic health records from one of the largest biobanks in the US, BioVU, to perform genetic studies of substance use disorders. Sandra is also receiving funds from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Award) to validate some of the human genetic findings using animal models.
Congratulations, Sandra!
Amy Lee, an undergraduate student working under Dr. Amanda Barkley-Levenson, presented a poster titled, “Glyoxalase 1 inhibition is a potential novel therapeutic target in chronic ethanol withdrawal” at the annual Judd Symposium held at UCSD on April 15th. Other authors include Dr. Barkley-Levenson and Dr. Abraham Palmer.
Dr. Abraham Palmer recently organized a visit for Sweetwater High School students to visit UCSD and attend the annual Judd Symposium.
Dr. Abraham Palmer presented the talk, “Using genome wide association studies
in mice, rats and humans to gain molecular insights into behavioral and physiological traits” at the Progress in the Science of Medicine (PRISM) lecture series on April 8th.
Dr. Amanda Barkey-Levenson received the IBANGS Young Investigator Travel Award for travel to the annual International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland May 10th-14th.
Congratulations, Amanda!
The article, “Genomic Basis of Delayed Reward Discounting,” has been accepted for publication in Behavioural Processes. Dr. Abraham Palmer and Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige are co-authors along with Joshua Gray, James MacKillop, and Harriet de Wit.
Highlights from the paper:
• Delayed reward discounting (DRD) is a measure of capacity to delay gratification.
• DRD is moderately heritable and associated with mental, physical, and social outcomes.
• DRD is a component of Research Domain Criteria and a putative target for treatment.
• The largest GWAS to date yielded a SNP heritability of 12% and one significant
