We welcome 3 new members to the Stein lab! Shana Hall is a postdoc with Jessica Cohen and doing a postdoctoral rotation in our lab to work on imaging genetics projects. Zach Humphrey and Tianyi Liu are both undergraduates working on automated recognition of cells within 3D microscopy images of the brain.
Chromatin interaction paper in developing human brain published
Congrats to Hyejung Won in Dan Geschwind's lab for publishing a paper in Nature on chromatin interaction via Hi-C in the developing human brain. This paper gives new insights into the genes (mis)regulated by schizophrenia risk alleles. We find that genetic variants associated with risk for schizophrenia in non-coding and functionally undefined regions of the genome are physically interacting with some previously suspected genes as well as some new genes. One step closer to understanding the biological pathways creating genetic risk for a complicated psychiatric disease.
Genetics of intracranial volume paper published in Nature Neuroscience
Our most recent paper of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-analysis consortium was just published in Nature Neuroscience. We identified 7 loci significantly influencing the structure of the human brain, some near very interesting neural genes (IGF1, FOXO3). Most interesting is the genetic correlation between intracranial volume and adult cognitive ability - the same genetic variants that influence the size of your brain also (in part) influence your cognitive ability later in life! Pretty exciting functional impacts of structural differences.
NSF grant acquired to develop a computational infrastructure for 3D microscopy images
Along with Ashok Krishnamurthy of RENCI (co-PI) and Guorong Wu of the BRIC (co-PI), we were funded for our proposal to develop a unified computational framework for analysis, storage, and visualization of 3D brain microscopy data from the NSF.
The Stein Lab welcomes Oleh Krupa
We welcome Oleh Krupa, a graduate student in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC - Chapel Hill and NC State, program to the lab!
The Stein Lab Welcomes Dan Liang!
We welcome Dan Liang, a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program to the lab!
Review published on autism genetics and neurobiology
We published a review in Nature Medicine on autism genetics and neurobiology. We present on what we view as the current state of the field, showing that there is much genetic variation creating risk for autism yet to be discovered. We also detail some of the neurobiological hypotheses that have been put forward based on the genetic findings. Finally, we talk about the model systems used to study autism and their results as well as limitations.
The Stein lab welcomes Angela Elwell!
Angela Elwell will begin as our lab manager/research specialist starting April 11th. Welcome Angela!
Paper published on genetic overlap between schizophrenia and brain structure
We published a paper in Nature Neuroscience about whether genetic variants which affect subcortical brain structure also affect risk for schizophrenia. Despite known volumetric differences in these structure in patients versus controls we find surprisingly little genetic overlap. A detailed description of the findings of this paper and their implications can be found in this video.
Stein lab moves to UNC
The Stein Lab is starting at UNC Chapel Hill in January 2016. The UNC Neuroscience Center announces the move here.