About Us
The BGG works on one of the biggest questions in biology today. How do the genetic cards we are dealt at the moment of conception interact with our lifetime experiences, from womb to grave, to give rise to our unique behavioural profile and our risk of neuropsychiatric disorder? Until recently, the complexities of such gene-environment interactions seemed overwhelming but new methods and insights now mean this problem is becoming increasingly tractable.
Active areas of research in the BGG include:
- Epigenetic regulation of behaviour and its role in mediating life events
- Genomic imprinting in the brain
- X-linked mechanisms influencing the genetic basis of sexually dimorphic behaviour
- Models of the genetic risk factors in schizophrenia
- Familial dementias and risk of neuropsychiatric illness
We work with colleagues in Cardiff, the UK and Internationally, to develop our work and to translate our basic research findings into clinically relevant areas.
News and Announcements
Simon Trent and William Davies have a poster at 68th Annual Meeting of Society for Biological Psychiatry in San Francisco, USA on 16th May: 'Limited Downstream Gene Expression Changes in a Genetic Mouse Model of Neurodevelopmental Disorder'.
Haddon JE et al. Extreme elemental processing in a high schizotypy population: relation to cognitive deficits. Q J Exp Psychol (in press).
Jessica Eddy & Lawrence Wilkinson have been awarded an MRC Centenary fund to investigate enduring maternal effects on adult behaviour abnormalities in Zfp804a mutants.
McNamara GI & Isles AR. Dosage-sensitivity of imprinted genes expressed in the brain: 15q11-q13 and neuropsychiatric illness. Biochemical Transactions 41(3): 721-26.
William Davies has been awarded funding for a Cardiff University Research Opportunities student to work on the following project: 'Investigating the spatiotemporal expression profile of the novel autism candidate gene Dgat2l6 in mouse'.