Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Principal Investigator
Infrastructure to facilitate discovery of autism genes
The purpose of this project is to facilitate the discovery of the genes that contribute autism by maintaining an infrastructure which research groups studying the genetics of autism can work collaboratively. This will be
accomplished through workshops, a Virtual Private Network, and access to a database that includes phenotype and genotype data from all participating groups.
Principal Investigator
A California Population-Based Twin Study of Autism
This will address several fundamental questions: (1) What is the heritability of autism (2) What is the contribution of genetic factors to variation in symptom dimensions? (3) Is there a continuum between the quantitative neurocognitive traits and clinical disorder? (4) What proportion of the variance in the neurocognitive traits is accounted for by genetic and non-genetic factors?
Co-Investigator
Center for Integrating Ethics in Genetics Research(Cho)
The goal of this project is to serve as a center of excellence in neurogenetics research, to develop a national model for bench, to bedside research ethics consultation, and to provide training opportunity in biomedical ethics.
Co-Investigator
Gene, Brain and Behavior in Turner Syndrome(Reiss)
The primary objective of this project is to use advanced, multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, analyses of X chromosome parent-of-origin and cognitive-behavioral assessment to elucidate the effects of monosomy and X-linked imprinting on neurodevelopment and neural function in a large cohort of young girls with Turner syndrome, pre-estrogen replacement.
Project Director
Project F: Genomic Analysis in narcolepsy cataplexy
The goal of the project is to locate genes outside the HLA region that influence susceptibility to narcolepsy. In order to localize these genes we will carry out a linkage and association study in the most extensive world-wide collection of DNAs from well-characterized patients with narcolepsy and their families.
