The 54th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar（January 30, 2015）

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The 54th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Friday, January 30. This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Masaki Nishioka, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “Searching Genome Architecture that Brings Variability to Brain Functions: Focusing on LINE 1”.

・Date/Time: January 30 (Friday) 16:00‐17:30
・Venue: Small Conference Room 2(3rd Floor), Tohoku Medical Megabank Building
・Title: Searching Genome Architecture that Brings Variability to Brain Functions: Focusing on LINE 1
・Lecturer: Masaki Nishioka (Department of Molecular Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo)

＊This lecture is transferable as a class in the medical research-related lecture course.

・Abstract: Genetic studies such as on psychiatric disorders have been actively conducted in order to understand various brain functions from the aspect of genes. The relationship between specific gene polymorphisms/ genetic variants and psychic functions has been reported in many studies; however, most of them have low odds ratio and penetration rate. Thus, it is thought that various genes are complexly associated. We hypothesized that, in addition to gene polymorphisms and genetic variants at individual level, somatic mutations occurred in the process of brain development were accountable of the variability in brain functions such as the development of psychiatric disorders, and we have proceeded with the analysis of somatic mutations in human brain. Special attention is paid to retrotransposon LINE-1.

A s the study methods, we utilize 1) an in silico method in which we extract the LINE-1 array from full genome sequence analysis data and identify novel insertion mutation and organ- (cell type-) specific somatic mutations and 2 ) a method (L1Hs-seq) that determines the location of insertion with the next generation sequencer and TAIL-PCR which uses specific primers for L1Hs that has an autonomic activity. In this lecture, we report the results of the ongoing preliminary examinations and discuss the future of the analysis of somatic mutations in brain and relationship with psychiatric disorders based on the interpretation of the data.

・Organizer: Yukuto Sato, Masao Nagasaki