Imperial College London

DrAndreBrown

Faculty of MedicineInstitute of Clinical Sciences

Reader in Behavioural Phenomics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 3313 8218andre.brown

 
 
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Location

 

4.15BLMS BuildingHammersmith Campus

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Summary

 

Summary

See our lab website here: tierpsy.com

We explore the molecular mechanisms underlying nervous system function by finding genes and gene networks that affect behaviour.

The goal of behavioural genomics is to understand the mapping between genome variation and behaviour. However, technology for sequencing and perturbing genomes is advancing more rapidly than our ability to assess all of the consequences of genetic perturbation. To help redress the imbalance between measures of genotype and phenotype, we are developing high-throughput imaging platforms to capture complex behavioural sequences and automated algorithms to interpret them.

Motor behaviour is a useful phenotype because it is the principal output of the nervous system and has previously been used to find genes with roles in synaptic transmission, neural development, and many kinds of sensation among other things. The nematode worm C. elegans is a great model for behavioural genomics in part because of its relatively simple and exceptionally well-characterised nervous system. Its locomotion is sufficiently complex to reliably identify subtle differences between mutants yet simple enough to quantify nearly completely. Well-developed reagents for imaging gene expression and neural activity make for a tight loop between hypothesis generating screens and hypothesis testing functional experiments.

Publications

Journals

Tom O, Ida B, Luigi F, et al., 2023, Systematic creation and phenotyping of Mendelian disease models in C. elegans: towards large-scale drug repurposing, Elife, Vol:12, ISSN:2050-084X

Saida K, Marootain R, Sengoku T, et al., 2023, Brain monoamine vesicular transport disease caused by homozygous<i> SLC18A2</i> variants: A study in 42 affected individuals, Genetics in Medicine, Vol:25, ISSN:1098-3600, Pages:90-102

Rosenhahn E, O'Brien TJ, Zaki MS, et al., 2022, Bi-allelic loss-of-function variants in PPFIBP1 cause a neurodevelopmental disorder with microcephaly, epilepsy, and periventricular calcifications, American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol:109, ISSN:0002-9297, Pages:1421-1435

Barlow I, Feriani L, Minga E, et al., 2022, Megapixel camera arrays enable high-resolution animal tracking in multiwell plates, Communications Biology, Vol:5, ISSN:2399-3642

Nambyiah P, Brown AEX, 2021, Quantitative behavioural phenotyping to investigate anaesthesia induced neurobehavioural impairment, Scientific Reports, Vol:11, ISSN:2045-2322, Pages:1-10

More Publications