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Genomics of Brain Disorders

Current Projects

  • Genomics and ‘omics’ platform.
  • Epigenomic and genomic analysis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in rape PTSD.
  • victims in South Africa.
  • Telomere length as a predictive biomarker of depression after rape in a cohort of South African women.
  • Understanding the SHARED ROOTS of Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Modifiable Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease: Insights from the microbiome.
  • Human induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate the molecular aetiology of PTSD, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.
  • Building psychiatric genetics analytical capacity in South Africa: Investigating genomic predictors of PTSD in the South African Mixed Ancestry population.
  • Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder: Insights from the Microbiome Collaboration.
  • Identifying maternal and early infant biomarkers for FASD diagnosis.
  • A study of the epidemiology and genetic risk associated with externalising disorders Broad spectrum of among children and adolescents in a rural cohort in south-Western Uganda psychiatric (MWANA Study).
  • Early psychobiological signatures of PTSD in youth from high adversity South Trauma and PTSD African.
  • South African Adolescence Sleep Intervention – SAASI: A randomized controlled trial for adolescents with PTSD with investigation of genetic and biological markers of change.
  • Understanding the SHARED ROOTS of Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Modifiable Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease: Several projects encompassing integration of genetic and epigenetic data with structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI, and Diffusion Tensor Imaging.
  • Neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety in the context of early developmental trauma: a structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and genetics study.
  • Hippocampal subfield volumes related to unique phenotypes and genotypes of PTSD.
  • Trauma of non-marital romantic relationship breakups among emerging adults.
  • Deep neural networks (with multi-task learning) to classify PD vs controls and concurrently MetS vs non-MetS.
  • Use and interpretation of classifier weights in the Shared Roots dataset.
  • Investigate the relationship between stress responses and abnormal ventral striatal activity and amygdala responses in fMRI, with childhood trauma as a mediating variable.
  • Functional and genetic underpinning of motor timing differences in HIV infection.