Genetics Grouping

This group conducts genetic research on human development and behaviour in Birkbeck's School of Science. The group was founded in 2009 and reflects part of the strategic initiative within the School of Science to develop genetic expertise.

Background and mission statement

• Genetic expertise in psychology departments is still a rarity and yet offers huge potential for conducting innovative and high impact research.
• This Genetics Grouping offers a unique niche because genetic research is often conducted by groups with limited understanding of the psychological nature of the phenotype and often insufficient measurement of the environment (i.e., emphasis disproportionately on putative disorder-inducing contexts to the relative neglect of development enhancing ones).
• We now know that genes play a significant role in influencing individual differences in development, in psychological disorders and learning disabilities, and in moderating the effects of environmental experiences on human functioning.
• Genetics is also at the fore in terms of the application of psychological research, through gene-led treatments and interventions and potential impact on insurance claims and government policies.
• The mission of the Genetics Grouping is to initiate and support on site genetic research of human development and behaviour in Birkbeck’s School of Science.  The specific purpose of the Grouping is to develop ideas and collaborations between its members, and create an intellectual environment conducive to obtaining funding and training for high quality empirically-based genetic research on human development and behaviour.

Group members

• Dr Edward D Barker
• Prof Mark Johnson
• Prof Annette Karmiloff-Smith
• Dr Emma Meaburn
• Dr Angelica Ronald
• Prof Michael Thomas
• For recent publications and projects please visit individual members' pages.

Research funders

• Autism Speaks
• Autistica
• Birkbeck School of Science
• the Bloomsbury Colleges
• British Academy
• Economic and Social Research Council
• Medical Research Council
• Nuffield Foundation
• Royal Society
• University of London Central Research Fund
• Williams Syndrome Foundation

Main activities of the group

• Group cohesion and focus is ensured through fortnightly genetics journal club meetings run by Dr Ronald, termly group meetings, and communal graduate student training.
• The work of the group is characterised by a wide range of methods, including behaviour genetic twin and family studies, candidate gene and genome-wide association studies, animal models, gene-environment interaction and differential susceptibility studies, gene expression and epigenetic studies, genetic neuroimaging and connectionist modelling of genotype-phenotype associations.

Genetics Journal Club

• Genetics Journal Club runs on a fortnightly basis throughout the academic year. Members of the Grouping, non-member faculty members, postdoctoral students and graduate students are all invited to attend. Recent articles are critically discussed at each meeting. Topics include, but are not limited to, genome-wide association studies, gene expression, epigenetics, animal models of human behaviour, genetic neuroimaging, behaviour genetic twin and family studies, gene-environment interaction and differential susceptibility studies.
• Please contact Dr Angelica Ronald (a.ronald@bbk.ac.uk) if you would like to take part in the genetics journal club.

Structure of the group and special themes

• The members share common research interests and on a day-to-day level use the Genetics Journal Club as the focal point of the Grouping.
• Members of the Grouping also bring expertise from their specific labs. The BabyLab (Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Ronald, Thomas) focuses on typical, at-risk, and atypical brain and cognitive development over the first years.
• The Developmental Neurocognition Lab (Thomas, Karmiloff-Smith, Ronald) focuses on understanding variability and individual differences in typical development and developmental disorders, and on understanding genotype/phenotype relations.

Research interests and achievements

• Edward Barker: Genetic, epigenetic and environmental influences on the development of antisocial behaviours and related impairments.
• Mark Johnson: Genetic influences on human functional brain development; Genetics and neuroimaging; Mapping individual differences in typical and atypical development with the use of genetic data.
• Annette Karmiloff-Smith: Genotype-phenotype relations in syndromes in which the specific genes have now been identified and in which other patients have partial deletions in the same critical region (e.g. Williams syndrome). Also, cross-syndrome comparisons, particularly in infancy, using in-depth phenotyping.
• Emma Meaburn: Identification of genetic (DNA sequence), transcriptomic (gene expression) and epigenetic (DNA methylation) variation in humans, and understanding how this variation accounts for individual differences in behaviour during childhood and adolescence. As part of this work, I am particularly interested in the identification of genomic loci whose expression and/or methylation patterns appear independent of DNA sequence, as this will provide insights into how the environment works at a molecular level to influence behaviour.  I am also involved in the development of novel bioinformatic and machine-learning tools that can be applied to large-scale genomic data in order to detect disease-associated loci and pathways.
• Angelica Ronald: Behaviour genetics (twin and family studies); genome-wide association studies; candidate gene studies; genetic influences across development; genetic and environmental causes of autism spectrum disorders and psychosis.
• Michael Thomas: Mapping genotype-phenotype relations using connectionist modelling and behaviour genetic approaches.

Collaborations and public dissemination

• Angelica Ronald and Emma Meaburn are both collaborators on the Twins Early Development Study and collaborate with the Psychiatric Epigenetics laboratory at the Institute of Psychiatry.
• Edward Barker is collaborating with Barbara Maughan, Sara Jaffee, Jonathan Mill and Rudolph Uher, of the Institute of Psychiatry; Essi Viding of University College London; Roy Otten and Rutger C. M. E. Engels, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Henrik Larsson and Paul Lichtenstein of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden; and John E. Lochman of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Behavior Problems, University of Alabama, USA.
• Annette Karmiloff-Smith has collaborations with the genetics group of Tassabehji at St.Mary’s Hospital, Manchester University, with the Rodent Behaviour Group of Rawlins and Flint at Oxford University, and with facial dysmorphology expert, Hammond, at UCL Institute of Child Health.