Dr. Jonathan Haines is a primary investigator on the project. Primary responsibilities include Ascertainment, DNA Banking and Genetic Epidemiology.

Dr. Haines' Center for Human Genome Research (CHGR) is the localization and identification of genes involved in human disease. For many diseases, this is a necessary first step in dissecting the etiology and physiology of the disease process, while for others it serves to demonstrate that genes are in fact important in the disease process. To achieve these goals a combination of techniques adopted from the fields of molecular biology, genetics, and epidemiology, integrating both molecular and statistical methods are used. The techniques fall into several categories, including population and genetic linkage, allelic association, gene structure and mutation, computer simulation, and methods for data analysis.

The CHGR is currently working on multiple sclerosis, autism, Alzheimer disease, age-related macular degeneration, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, adult-onset glaucoma, and epilepsy. A similar paradigm is used for most of these diseases. They are also actively developing methods for large-scale databasing of clinical, demographic, and genetic data.

Complete information

Lab URL: http://phg.mc.vanderbilt.edu/jonathan.shtml