Tracy Warren

Research Description

Genome-wide association studies of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suggest psychiatric risk is associated with an intronic region of CACNA1C, a gene encoding for a postsynaptic calcium channel. It is likely that this region contains cis-regulatory elements controlling the rate of transcription of CACNA1C in neurons. Tracy’s research aims to determine allelic effects of identified regulatory DNA elements in this region. Her accomplishments on this project have already earned her one fourth-authored publication and one first author publication, listed below, that are currently under review. She additionally plans to conduct a larger screen of high-priority schizophrenia and bipolar disorder variants from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium for regulatory activity in vivo. She ultimately hopes to study whether genetic misexpression results in psychiatrically relevant cellular phenotypes with an eye toward identifying potential therapeutic targets. Tracy is also working on a collaborative project with Dr. Cameron Carter (UCDMC) and Dr. Pak Sham at Hong Kong University to study the relationship between genomic variation, brain imaging markers, behavior and drug response in individuals with psychotic disorders in California and Hong Kong.