Dr. Daniel Munro, Assistant Project Scientist at Palmer Lab, was awarded a Pilot Grant for his project titled “Mapping Protein Quantitative Trait Loci in the Heterogeneous Stock Rat Brain to Identify Causal Genes at Substance Use Disorder GWAS Loci.”
The Pilot Grant project was selected for support by the Yale/NIDA Neuroproteomics Center, and it is directly aligned with the Center’s theme of Proteomics of Altered Signaling in Addiction.
In this project, Dr. Munro will generate the first protein quantitative trait locus (pQTL) dataset in HS rats by applying proteomics to 100 whole-brain hemisphere samples with existing matched genotype and eQTL data. Integrating these data with SUD GWAS results from HS rats will identify candidate signaling proteins at addiction-relevant loci. The pilot data will directly support future work scaling pQTL mapping across the full HS rat cohort and discrete brain regions, with future directions in cell-type-specific in vivo proximity-proteomics approaches.
Congratulations, Dr. Munro!