Integrative Omics In Psychiatric Diseases: Tools For Discovery and Understanding Biology

Abstract

Overall Abstract The last decade of genomics research has demonstrated the power of high-throughput genome-wide approaches to make discoveries and enhance understanding of disease processes across all facets of biology, from genetic variants to gene expression to metabolism. The predominant model has been to study each “omic” independently. However, the increasing availability of data and the decreasing costs of data generation have begun to move the field into integrative ‘omics. In this symposium, speakers will present current efforts to sequentially integrate multiple ‘omics to discover and understand genomic risks for psychiatric disorders, and review methods available to push the field even further, to concurrent analyses of multi-omics data. Dr. Dana Hancock (RTI International) will present novel genome-wide association results for nicotine dependence and expression quantitative loci analyses that link genome-wide significant variation to gene expression in cerebellum, an often overlooked tissue for addiction. Dr. Andrew Jaffe (Lieber Institute for Brain Development & Johns Hopkins University) will present research characterizing the human brain transcriptome around known loci associated with schizophrenia and assessing developmental, genetic, and illness-based associations in the expression of transcript features. Dr. Laura Bierut (Washington University) will present research that integrates differential gene methylation and expression among alcohol use disorder (AUD) decedent cases and controls in prefrontal cortex with genome-wide association data to identify novel regulatory variants associated with AUD. Dr. Yan Sun (Emory University) will present a review of analytic methods and study designs for concurrent integrated analyses of mulit-omic data, with an eye toward application and improvement of existing methods. Dr. Nancy Cox (Vanderbilt University) will be the discussant. Attendees will learn from state-of-the-art examples of integrative omics applied to psychiatric diseases and obtain insights into the future directions for this important approach to understanding the biology of psychiatric diseases.