The Human Brain: Leveraging omic data to discover the genetics of matching energy supply and demand in health and disease

大脑的能量需求很高，进化研究表明，人类更高认知功能的出现与能量代谢的变化有关。尽管线粒体和核过程在满足高能量需求方面发挥着关键作用，但在大脑中，连接核和线粒体基因组的遗传学和功能机制仍未得到充分研究。该项目旨在揭示遗传变异如何调节不同大脑区域的线粒体转录组，了解与人类大脑发育相关的已识别遗传变异的进化轨迹，以及这些过程在人类衰老和疾病中的重要性。

The energy demands of the brain are high and evolutionary studies indicate that emergence of higher cognitive function in humans is associated with shifting energy metabolism. Despite a key role for tightly co-regulated mitochondrial and nuclear processes to satisfy high-energy demands, the genetics and functional mechanisms linking the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes remain understudied in brain. This project aims to uncover how genetic variation modulates the mitochondrial transcriptome in different brain regions, to understand the evolutionary trajectory of identified genetic variation associated with the development of the human brain, and the importance of these processes in human ageing and disease.