Gene-by-environment interactions in depression

Professor Chris Haley

Supervisors:  Andrew McIntosh, Carmen Amador (Edinburgh); Patrick Sullivan (Karolinska)

Major depression (MD) is a very common psychiatric illness with a heritability estimated to be 30-40% and important contributions from environmental factors. The effect of suspected interactions between genes and environment (GxE) has been rarely studied. This project will initiate the identification of these interactions using computational analysis of data from several large population cohorts. The objectives of this project are: (1) to gauge the extent of variation accounted for by GxE in depression and related traits and (2) to dissect GxE further through interactions between specific loci and environments. This project gives the opportunity to develop and apply skills in computational approaches to genetic analysis of large scale psychiatric data and publish the results in high impact journals.