Tracey L. Petryshen, Ph.D. is an
Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical
School and Director of the Behavior Neurogenetics
Laboratory in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric
Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and
Harvard. Dr. Petryshen received her Ph.D.
in Medical Genetics from the University
of Calgary for her thesis work involving
genetic linkage and association studies
of dyslexia. She subsequently completed
a postdoctoral fellowship investigating
the genetic basis of neuropsychiatric disorders
with Dr. Pamela Sklar at the Broad Institute.
Dr. Petryshen’s current research focuses
on the identification of genes that confer
risk of multi-factorial psychiatric and
behavioral disorders. Her group uses both
patient genetic studies, and mouse behavioral
and neuromolecular studies, to uncover risk
genes and neural circuits underlying the
disorders and examine their roles in disease
pathophysiology. Research to-date has focused
on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and
this translational approach is being expanded
to other disorders such as autism, anxiety,
and major depression.
The approach to utilize both patient and
mouse genetic studies has two complementary
directions: 1) patient studies are performed
to identify candidate disease genes that
are examined in mouse using powerful genomic
tools to determine the effect of gene expression
and allelic changes at both the phenotypic
and cellular levels, and 2) mouse model
studies are carried out to identify candidate
disease genes whose homologs can be examined
for genetic association in clinical populations.
The mouse studies focus on behavioral and
neurophysiologic models of psychiatric disorders,
and in vitro and in vivo examination of
neuronal morphology and function relevant
to disease pathophysiology. The lab is also
collaborating with other Stanley Center
investigators to examine the therapeutic
potential of small molecules through mouse
behavioral studies. Dr. Petryshen has been
involved in numerous studies to identify
candidate loci and genes for schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder encompassing linkage,
haplotype-based gene association, population
genetic, and microarray mRNA expression
methods. More recently, she has turned her
attention to psychiatric disease endophenotypes
(intermediate traits) as a potentially powerful
approach to identify susceptibility genes
and to dissect the genetic contribution
to different clinical subdomains. As part
of this effort, she directs the Genetics
Core of the Boston Center for Intervention
Development and Applied Research (CIDAR)
to investigate genetic associations with
cognitive, neuroimaging, electrophysiological,
and hormonal markers of schizophrenia disease
progression and disturbances in neural circuitry
that are observed in patients.
Dr. Petryshen’s research is funded
by the National Alliance for Research on
Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), the
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.
|
