NIH P50 MH106933
Co-Investigator (PI: Isaac Kohane)
As a result of the accelerated pace of development of technologies for characterizing the human genome, the rate-limiting step for large scale genomic investigation in clinical populations is now phenotyping. This is particularly the case for neuropsychiatric (NP) illness, where phenotypes are complex, biomarkers are lacking, and the primary cell types of interest are difficult to access directly. It has become apparent that both rare and common genetic variation contributes to disease risk and that this risk crosses traditional diagnostic boundaries in psychiatry. Taking advantage of a large, already-established NP biobank could dramatically accelerate progress toward understanding the cross-disorder mechanism of action of disease liability genes. This study proposes novel applications of emerging technologies in informatics and cellular neurobiology to eliminate this phenotyping bottleneck. In doing so, it will accelerate investigation of clinical and cellular phenotypes for understanding single and multilocus/polygenic associations.