Research: Neurogenetics

About our research

Many conditions that affect our brain result from complex interactions between both genetic and environmental factors.

The developmental trajectories of a foetus or offspring are also highly influenced by early environment, and alterations during key developmental stages can lead to long-term detrimental outcomes and adult diseases.

A major area of our research is in understanding the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms important in early development and the pathways through which various insults can lead to altered mental health, ageing and age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

Stem cells

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS) are somatic cells that have been reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like pluripotency.

We Induce pluripotency using lentiviral technology to introduce synthetic transcription factor activated reporter gene cassettes into somatic cells in order to evaluate their activity during iPSC reprogramming in living cells. This has led us to new insights into the way a cell switches the manner in which it produces energy during iPSC reprogramming.

Neurodevelopmental programming

We apply our state of the art technologies to interrogate the cell signalling underlying neural cell differentiation during normal development and in neurodevelopmental disease.

Of particular interest are the key genes, transcription factors and ion channels involved in programming CNS immune cells and cells at the blood-brain barrier.

Environmental and epigenetic programming

Epigenetics involves multiple processes such as DNA methylation, chromatin modifications, and noncoding RNAs to regulate gene expression. Epigenetic mechanisms are both important in brain developmental processes and age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

A major area of our work is the role of epigenetics in programming responses to early-life environments such as stress and diet. Studying human cohorts and using animal models, we investigate the epigenetic regulation of stress and immune-related factors following prenatal and postnatal environments.

Alterations in the immune system and increased inflammation are factors in the aetiology of many psychiatric diseases including neurodevelopmental and stress-related disorders. Stress can further have a negative impact on the immune system, making individuals more vulnerable to infections and diseases.

We investigate links between inflammatory factors and mental health, exploring the epigenetic and genetic regulation of immune factors in response to stress and in psychiatric diseases.