Return to the Faculty List
Amelia Gallitano-Mendel, M.D., Ph.D.
Current
Position
Instructor in Psychiatry
Areas of Research Interests
We are sequencing candidate psychosis genes from a class of genes that have been hypothesized to contribute to risk for schizophrenia. In addition, we are evaluating the potential role these genes may play in psychiatric disorders by analyzing the behavior of individual targeted-mutation mouse lines in a number of test paradigms.
In the past year we have discovered a constellation of emotional and social behavioral abnormalities in mice lacking expression of immediate early gene transcription factors. These genes are members of a family of inducible transcription factors that are activated in key brain regions involved in emotional behavior in response to a wide range of stimuli including stress, social cues, and psychoactive medications. Our results of abnormalities in anxiety and fear-related behaviors and aggressive behavior link this exciting class of genes to emotional behavior. By both responding to exogenous stimuli and regulating the expression of target genes in the brain, genes of this class are poised to translate changes in the environment into the molecular events underlying a behavioral response. This property of IEGs makes them outstanding candidates for genes that give rise to psychiatric disorders as their biological activity could parsimoniously explain the combined genetic and environmental contributions to risk for the major mental illnesses. We are currently investigating whether specific IEGs may be associated with psychotic disorders using a combined approach of analyzing the behavior of mice lacking function of these genes as well as screening for mutations in these genes in DNA samples from a population of psychiatrically ill patients.