HMS Assistant Professor of Genetics Steven McCarroll was recently named the latest recipient of the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation Junior Faculty Grant. His work explores the intersection between basic science and human disease, particularly certain psychiatric disorders, the risk for which may be passed from generation to generation.
This grant program fulfills one of the Armenise-Harvard foundation’s primary goals: to encourage the work of exceptional scientists early in their careers, providing grants of $75,000 for each of two years. The foundation sponsors several grants in support of basic science research, both at Harvard and at leading universities and research institutions in Italy, home to its founder, Count Giovanni Auletta Armenise.
McCarroll, who joined the HMS Department of Genetics in 2009, explores how human genome variation influences the molecular properties of cells on the way to influencing the risk of disease. McCarroll’s laboratory will use his grant to study mutational processes that shape the human genome; a high priority will be to understand a process called Alu retrotransposition.
Alu is the most plentiful human transposon, a piece of DNA that can independently replicate and install its copy into a new position on the same or another chromosome. Surprisingly, despite the prevalence of Alu copies (they comprise more than 10 percent of the human genome sequence) and their ongoing effects on the human genome sequence and structure, how Alu copies are dispersed remains a mystery. McCarroll is interested in understanding how the genome variation generated by Alu and other mutational processes relates to human psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The risk of psychiatric disorders is heritable, and a molecular understanding of the relationship of these afflictions to the human genome could one day lead to both new molecular insights and treatment strategies.
Steve McCarroll joins grant renewal recipients Samara Reck-Peterson, assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology, and Sandeep Robert Datta, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology. Reck-Peterson is investigating the movement of the dynein protein, which works as a molecular motor within cells. Datta’s work involves measuring how the olfactory system conveys information to the brain that initiates instinctive, fear-driven behavior.
Candidates for the Junior Faculty Grant are nominated by their departments and must submit a proposal to the Armenise–Harvard Foundation by December 2011. A Senior Faculty Review Committee representing the basic science departments at HMS evaluates applications and selects the finalists.
For more information on the Armenise-Harvard Foundation and its programs, visit http://www.hms.harvard.edu/Armenise/home.html.
