Annette M. Taberner

At the Broad Institute, I was a member of the neuropsychiatric genetics group — a talented team of scientists in the program for Medical and Population Genetics who are interested in understanding the genetic basis for psychiatric disorders. Our group is involved in a number of projects dealing with both humanDNA association studies and mouse models of human psychiatricdisease. As a member of the group, I worked on the developmentof computational algorithms and experimental techniques to studythe genetic basis for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

To investigate the genetic basis of bipolar disorder, I wrote algorithms in Matlab to analyze over 100,000 single nucleotidepolymorphisms (SNPs), across the genome, in a set of patients andcontrols. The algorithms look for loss of heterozygosity (LOH) andnull genotype calls to identify genomic regions with deletions. The algorithms also perform statistical analysis to identify significantcorrelations between LOH and the disease state. Regions with significant correlations are further investigated by looking at DNAcopy number changes in those regions.

To study the genetic basis of schizophrenia, I was involved in aproject whose goal is to create a behavioral mouse model for aknown endophenotype of schizophrenia, prepulse inhibtion (PPI). As a member of this project, I helped determine the experimentaltechniques needed to stereotaxically deliver short-hairpin double-stranded ribonucleotides (shRNAs) against candidate genes for PPI. I also performed several preliminary experiments to determine theappropriate stereotaxic coordinates to reach the ventricle and theappropriate surgical techniques for survival surgery.

Along with the above projects, I also participated in a smaller project that involved the genotyping of several SNPs, within a geneof interest to bipolar disorder, in over 2,000 individuals. My next postdoctoral position will be with the Miami Project to CureParalysis at the University of Miami Medical School. At this center, I hope to combine my training in engineering, neurophysiology andgenetics to help restore motor function in individuals with spinalchord injury.