Sullivan Lab : UNC Chapel Hill, Department of Genetics : Projects

The Sullivan lab aims to understand the genetic and epidemiological basis of a number of often critically important public-health problems. These disorders are heterogeneous and exhibit complex patterns of inheritance. Developing an understanding of these disorders requires the integration of findings from multiple investigative approaches (e.g., epidemiology, genome-wide association, candidate gene association, genome-wide linkage).

The central focus of the Sullivan lab is on schizophrenia. Tobacco use, chronic fatigue, autism, eating disorders, and major depression are additional areas of interest.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is chronic and often debilitating mental disorder affects ~0.7% of the human population. Although it is clear that genetics plays a role in schizophrenia, specific genes that have a causal role in the disease have yet to be identified. Active projects include:

Genome-wide case-control association studies of etiology
Pharmacogenetics of treatment outcome and adverse drug reactions
Psychiatric GWAS Consortium (http://pgc.unc.edu), a community effort to conduct GWAS mega-analyses for schizophrenia plus ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder
Intensive genomic follow-up of positive hits

Smoking Behavior

Tobacco use is one of the major public health problems throughout the world. With Dr. Helena Furberg, we are interested in identifying genetic influences on smoking behavior, particularly smoking cessation. The major sample for this work is a large longitudinal cohort drawn from the Swedish Twin Registry. Genomic projects are in planning stages. In addition we established the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium to conduct a genome-wide association study meta-analysis for smoking in 2008.

Eating Disorders

The eating disorders - anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder - are relatively common conditions in women of all ages and are associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. With Prof Cynthia Bulik, we conduct epidemiological, genetic epidemiological, and genetic studies on eating disorders.

Autism

With Drs Molly Losh, Joe Piven, and Deborah Hatton, we are collecting a sample of males with Fragile X Syndrome (funded by Autism Speaks). There are also linkage studies of broader autism phenotypes.

Tardive Dyskenisia

Tardive dyskinesia is a movement disorder often strongly associated with chronic exposure to "typical" antipsychotics. Using mouse and human data, Dr. Jim Crowley is working to understand the genetic basis of TD where the overall intention is eventually to develop an algorithm to predict which patients might develop TD if given typical antipsychotics.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

CFS is an uncommon but clearly debilitating disorder that remains controversial despite many years of study. Standard methods of genetic epidemiology have yielded little information about the etiology of CFS. The Sullivan lab is involved in large twin studies in Sweden, and is applying microarray and proteomic approaches to identify useful etiological hypotheses for this complex disease.

Bioinformatical Tools

There is an abundance of genomic data that can be used in the service of a biological problem. This task is not always straightforward. We have written tools for use in genetic research. These tools include an automated way to select SNPs (TAMAL), SNP annotations for the main genome-wide SNP platforms, and the Evidence Project (SLEP) which allows easy searching of genome-wide linkage, genome-wide association, and microarray data.

Major Depressive Disorder

With colleagues in the Netherlands, we have been conducting genomewide searches for susceptibility loci for MDD.


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The Sullivan lab aims to understand the genetic and epidemiological basis of a number of often critically important public-health problems. These disorders are heterogeneous and exhibit complex patterns of inheritance. Developing an understanding of these disorders requires the integration of findings from multiple investigative approaches (e.g., epidemiology, genome-wide association, candidate gene association, genome-wide linkage). The central focus of the Sullivan lab is on schizophrenia. Tobacco use, chronic fatigue, autism, eating disorders, and major depression are additional areas of interest. Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is chronic and often debilitating mental disorder affects ~0.7% of the human population. Although it is clear that genetics plays a role in schizophrenia, specific genes that have a causal role in the disease have yet to be identified. Active projects include: Genome-wide case-control association studies of etiology Pharmacogenetics of treatment outcome and adverse drug reactions Psychiatric GWAS Consortium (http://pgc.unc.edu), a community effort to conduct GWAS mega-analyses for schizophrenia plus ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder Intensive genomic follow-up of positive hits Smoking Behavior Tobacco use is one of the major public health problems throughout the world. With Dr. Helena Furberg, we are interested in identifying genetic influences on smoking behavior, particularly smoking cessation. The major sample for this work is a large longitudinal cohort drawn from the Swedish Twin Registry. Genomic projects are in planning stages. In addition we established the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium to conduct a genome-wide association study meta-analysis for smoking in 2008. Eating Disorders The eating disorders - anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder - are relatively common conditions in women of all ages and are associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. With Prof Cynthia Bulik, we conduct epidemiological, genetic epidemiological, and genetic studies on eating disorders. Autism With Drs Molly Losh, Joe Piven, and Deborah Hatton, we are collecting a sample of males with Fragile X Syndrome (funded by Autism Speaks). There are also linkage studies of broader autism phenotypes. Tardive Dyskenisia Tardive dyskinesia is a movement disorder often strongly associated with chronic exposure to "typical" antipsychotics. Using mouse and human data, Dr. Jim Crowley is working to understand the genetic basis of TD where the overall intention is eventually to develop an algorithm to predict which patients might develop TD if given typical antipsychotics. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) CFS is an uncommon but clearly debilitating disorder that remains controversial despite many years of study. Standard methods of genetic epidemiology have yielded little information about the etiology of CFS. The Sullivan lab is involved in large twin studies in Sweden, and is applying microarray and proteomic approaches to identify useful etiological hypotheses for this complex disease. Bioinformatical Tools There is an abundance of genomic data that can be used in the service of a biological problem. This task is not always straightforward. We have written tools for use in genetic research. These tools include an automated way to select SNPs (TAMAL), SNP annotations for the main genome-wide SNP platforms, and the Evidence Project (SLEP) which allows easy searching of genome-wide linkage, genome-wide association, and microarray data. Major Depressive Disorder With colleagues in the Netherlands, we have been conducting genomewide searches for susceptibility loci for MDD.
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