Peter A. Antinozzi
Functional genomics. Advances in high-throughput genotyping technologies and large collaborative efforts which combine genetic datasets have brought to light several novel candidate genes involved in a variety of diseases. In particular, studies of complex trait diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease have been great beneficiaries of these efforts and a number of highly replicated loci have been identified. The bottleneck in translating these findings towards clinical intervention is determining the causative mechanisms of the allelic variants within these loci. To this end, one of the primary goals of my laboratory is to leverage clinically relevant genetic data with functional data at the cellular level.
Functional mapping. One of our current initiatives is "functional mapping of diabetes-susceptibility loci" to identify novel genes involved in diabetes. In brief, we systematically dissect clinically relevant chromosome regions with molecular biology strategies that alter the expression of candidate genes. Expression of specific allelic variants and/or gene knockdown (via RNA interference methods) are functionally assessed by a panel of cell-based functional assays.
| High-throughput, high-content screening. A second area of research in my laboratory is the development of cell-based assays for our functional mapping projects. The goal of this research area is to increase the throughput of the functional screening by assay miniturization and multiplexing readouts. Our current strategies include a combination of assays that are image-based (via automated fluorescence microscopy) and plate reader-based (fluorescence, luminescence, absorbance). |
Other reseach interests include metabolism-secretion coupling, beta-cell transcription factors, and the mechanisms of antigen presentation in regards to type I diabetes.
Contact Info and Recent publications