User:Rhunter

My research training has focused on gene-environment interactions in the brain in animal models of human neuropsychiatric disorders, and most recently includes substantial work with multiple NGS methods and large gene expression data sets. My pre-doctoral training in the laboratory of Michael Kuhar, Ph.D. was supported by a NIDA pre-doctoral NRSA and focused on describing the regulation of the neuropeptide CART in the mesolimbic dopamine system in the context of psychostimulant abuse. I was fortunate to pursue post-doctoral training at the Rockefeller University in the laboratories of Dr. Bruce McEwen and Dr. Donald Pfaff where I obtained cutting edge training in epigenetics, neuroendocrinology and the neurobiology of stress and glucocorticoids. My work there included multiple projects examining the consequences of environmental stress on gene expression in the rat brain and was supported by both NIH, and competitive grants from private foundations like NARSAD, from whom I received a Young Investigator award. Most significantly, I demonstrated that stress induces pronounced epigenetic changes in histone methylation in the rat hippocampus and, using ChIP-sequencing and related NGS methodologies, showed that this was part of a global ‘genomic stress response’ targeted at controlling the expression of non-coding transposon-derived RNAs. My training in epigenetics and bioinformatics at Rockefeller was extensive and has continued since that time. Continuing training has included bioinformatics courses at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Cornell Medical College and the NIGMS funded UAB short course on next-generation sequencing. My laboratory has continued to work on the regulation of transposons and non-coding RNAs in models of stress both experimentally and theoretically since I arrived at UMass.