HWB Seminar, Dr Ziada Ayorech

Genetics, geography and the intergenerational transmission of maternal depression risk and resilience

The aetiology of depression remains poorly understood in part, due to three research barriers: 1) lack of success in identifying genetic markers specific to depression 2) inadequate account of environmental risk factors in genetic research and 3) heterogeneity. By capitalizing on data from the world’s largest (N= 240 000) pregnancy cohort (MoBa; the Norwegian, mother, father and offspring cohort study) and including geographical location data from the entire Norwegian population (> 7 000 000), GenGeoRisk is the first intergenerational, multi-environmental and DNA based investigation of depression to date. This talk will serve to introduce current methods in the genetics of depression, demonstrate the benefit of parent-child trio data, and present preliminary analyses from the first three project papers.

To register for this event, see link above.