Project Summary

Yoav Kohn, M.D. (Young Investigator 2006) of Hadassah Medical School and Hebrew University, plans to study an inbred Israel family in which many members have psychiatric disorders to find genes associated with mental illness. The family has 52 members with major psychiatric disorders, 42 unaffected relatives, and 20 controls. In the proposed project, Dr. Kohn will use a whole-genome platform to understand the genetic background. He will apply a new statistical method to study allele and haplotype sharing in the large inbred pedigree, in which not all family relations between individuals are known. In chromosomal regions of increased sharing he will sequence genes in search of a rare variant with a presumed major effect on the phenotype. The study of such a homogenous group of patients will allow him to use both a broad and a narrow definition of the phenotype. Thus, he will be able detect mutations that contribute to the etiology of different psychotic disorders.

Program Area: OTHER\General-Mental Illness

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