DISCOVERING GENES FOR MENTAL HEALTH

近年来，人类遗传学领域取得了巨大进展，导致了跨越基因组的遗传标记的高分辨率地图，更有效的生成标记数据的方法，以及绘制疾病基因的新方法。随着在全基因组基础上寻找疾病易感位点变得更加可行，对精神特征和其他复杂特征的遗传研究急剧增加。然而，虽然对在统计遗传学多学科领域受过训练的个人的需求有所增加，但这类个人的供应却很少或没有增加。由于每年只有为数不多的统计遗传学家接受过培训，这方面的问题很难得到缓解。我们的培训计划将满足对统计遗传学家的强烈需求。我们的培训计划的目标是在人类遗传学，统计学和精神病学的界面上培训多学科统计遗传学家，以便开发改进的方法来绘制和发现涉及精神病学和其他遗传复杂特征的位点。我们的目标是：1)在现代人类遗传学的范式和方法论方面教育以定量为导向的学员；2)对生物学方向的学员进行统计学和统计遗传学的范式和方法论教育；3)就涉及精神病学和行为遗传学的特定问题提供培训，包括研究设计、表型、伦理学和数据分析等问题；4)提供科学诚信和研究伦理原则方面的培训。我们的前提是，我们的培训计划只有在我们的毕业生在人类遗传学，统计学和精神病学以及这些领域的接口方面进行广泛的培训才能成功。成功的毕业生将能够流利地说人类遗传学和精神病学的语言，并拥有一个工具库来分析具有挑战性的数据，并能够识别和解决重要和突出的研究问题。

Recent years have seen dramatic progress in the field of human genetics, leading to high-resolution maps of genetic markers spanning the genome, more efficient methods for generating marker data, and novel approaches to mapping disease genes. As it has become more feasible to search for disease-susceptibility loci on a genome-wide basis, there has been a dramatic increase in genetic studies of psychiatric traits and other complex traits. However, while there has been an increase in the demand for individuals trained in the multidisciplinary field of statistical genetics, there has been little or no increase in the supply of such individuals. With only a handful of statistical geneticists trained each year, little relief is in sight. Our training program will address the strong need for statistical geneticists. The goal of our training program is to train multidisciplinary statistical geneticists at the interface of human genetics, statistics, and psychiatry in order to develop improved methods for mapping and discovering loci involved in psychiatric and other genetically complex traits. Our goals are: 1) To educate quantitatively-oriented trainees in the paradigms and methodology of modern human genetics; 2) to educate biologically-oriented trainees in the paradigms and methodology of statistics and statistical genetics; 3) to provide training in the particular issues involved in psychiatric and behavioral genetics, including issues of study design, phenotyping, ethics, and data analysis; 4) to provide training in scientific integrity and ethical principles in research. Our premise is that our training program will only be successful if our graduates have extensive training in human genetics, statistics, and psychiatry, and in the interface of these areas. The successful graduate will be able to fluently speak the language of human genetics and psychiatry as well as to have an arsenal of tools to analyze challenging data, and to be able to identify and solve important and outstanding research problems.