CORE--GENOMICS /BIOINFORMATICS--ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AND AUTISM

The goal of the proposed studies is to inform and enhance the search for genetic determinants of common, heritable disease by predicting novel candidate genes, and pathways of interacting gene products, likely to harbor genetic variation that influences susceptibility to, or protection against, development of disease. This study will provide a conduit of candidate genes, and gene-networks, that will be genotyped in large, family-based sample collections of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and autism plus spectrum disorder (ASD) kindreds, respectively. A second goal is to design and apply appropriate statistical and computational methods to analyze the type of novel genetic datasets that will emerge from the proposed studies, and to identify disease related genetic variants. This will require extensive use of evidence integration methods, biomedical literature datamining, and ontologies developed in Cores 9001 and 9002.