How do our genes cause neuropsychiatric disorders?
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Project Leader
Dr Mike Clark+61 3 9035 3669
Project Details
Our genes play a key role in our risk for developing neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. However, while many risk genes have been discovered, we don’t have a good understanding of what goes wrong with these genes or how they increase risk of disease. Our research has identified many new RNA products from neuropsychiatric risk genes, some of which may confer disease risk. This project will use a combination of cutting-edge technologies, (including Nanopore long-read sequencing, stem-cell models of disease, antisense oligonucleotides, mass spectrometry and bioinformatics) to investigate the function of these RNAs and their protein products and decipher how these genes cause risk for disease. This project will provide crucial new knowledge into the causes of neuropsychiatric disorders and potentially identify novel targets for future therapeutics. The opportunity exists to focus on the lab side and/or the bioinformatic aspects of this project and it would suit students interested in either laboratory work or computational analysis.
Collaborators
Clare Parish, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Aus
Steve Wilton, Murdoch University, Aus