Projects and Grants

Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's Disease

  1. Profiling alternative splicing in schizophrenia and mouse models of dysmyelination using alternative splicing microarrays.
  2. Finding targets of the RNA binding protein QKI implicated in schizophrenia by both gene expression and genetic linkage studies.
  3. Identifying functional alleles in QKI, and other candidate RNA binding proteins, that may be associated with schizophrenia.
  4. Characterizing the regional expression profile of certain RNA binding proteins that are decreased in postmortem samples of schizophrenic brain.
  5. Quantitative regional expression profiling of the Glutamate Type 1 transporter isoforms; relevance to schizophrenia and AD.

Projects one through four summarized in:

McInnes LA & Lauriat TL. (2006) RNA metabolism and dysmyelination in schizophrenia. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (in press).

Autism

  1. Profiling submicroscopic chromosomal abnormalities in autism using array-based Comparative Genomic Hybridization (500K Affy arrays). Abnormalities detected are followed up using FISH, genomic real-time PCR, and Q-RT PCR.