About Us
Prinicipal Investigator
Dr. Marquis Vawter
Faculty Profile
Dr. Vawter is a faculty member
in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior performing preclinical and clinical research.
He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in psychiatry and specializes
in molecular psychiatry techniques involving genetics and functional genomics.
Dr. Vawter was trained in both clinical and physiological psychology tracks
and obtained additional neuroscience and neuropsychological assessment training at NIH.
Dr. Vawter has directed the the Functional Genomics Laboratory since 2001 and has been involved
in different projects through collaborations with Dr. William E. Bunney and the UCI Brain Bank.
These projects are involved with postmortem brain gene expression in affective and psychotic disorders.
Phenotypes such as suicide are being investigated in the laboratory and mitochondria projects involving gene
expression and resequencing of the mitochondria genome in psychiatric disorders and performing quantitative
trait analysis using mitochondria haplogroups are currently underway.
Lab Manager
Brandi Rollins
Brandi Rollins graduated from the University of California,
Davis with a degree in genetics and is currently the lab manager for the Functional Genomics Laboratory. Her current projects
include performing microarray analysis using Affymetrix U133P, Human Exon 1.0 ST, and Human Mitochondrial Resequencing Arrays.
She is involved in researching the genetics of neuropsychiatric illness in Costa Rica as well as performing RT PCR analysis on candidate
genes for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Maureen Martin
Dr. Martin is a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Vawter's laboratory. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology
from St. Louis University in 2006. She has worked with Dr. Vawter since 2006 and has been involved in projects investigating alterations in gene
expression and protein levels in bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia, genetic linkage of cognitive and gene expression traits
related to schizophrenia, and laser capture microdissection in postmortem brain samples.
Della Martin Fellow
Dr. P. Adolfo Sequeira
Adolfo's main interest is to explore the genetic and molecular basis of neuropsychiatric disorders in order to find markers for prevention or for the development of therapeutic interventions. With a background in molecular biology and genetics, he completed a master in neurosciences from the University of Montreal and a PhD in human genetics at McGill University. He is now the Della Martin Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, University of California, Irvine. In his projects he uses a candidate gene approach and a case-control design, to carry out genetic variation studies. He is also involved in gene expression studies of cortical and sub cortical (hippocampus, limbic system) regions from psychiatric subjects (suicides or not) and normal controls. The main purpose of his studies is to explore the relationship between changes in gene expression and genetics in relation to neuropsychiatric disorders.
Staff Research Associate
Ling Morgan
With an MS degree in Biochemistry and a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering, Ling Morgan has worked in the Functional Genomics Laboratory since 2006. Her work includes the validation of differential expression of candidate genes by QPCR, performing real time PCR assays, designing specific primers and determining the significance of target gene expression. She is also involved in a sleep deprivation project, where she processes RNA extraction from multiple blood draws at different sleep deprivation time points, generates cDNA and analyzes gene expression data to compare subjects with psychiatric disorder and healthy control subjects.
Staff Research Associate
Emily Moon
Emily Moon is a research associate in the Vawter Functional Genomics Laboratory.
She recieved her BA in Criminology and Psychology from University of California, Irvine in 2007. Emily began working at the lab in 2005 as a work-study
student and has been involved in projects investigating schizophrenia in the Central Valley region of Costa Rica. She created and maintains the website,
so please forward any questions or comments about the site to her e-mail.
Former Lab Members
Former laboratory members that have moved to other positions are:
- Hiroaki Tomita, M.D., Ph.D (Della Martin fellow)
- Ling Shao, Ph.D
- Mary Atz
- Erick Ferran
- Kevin Overman
