The Palmer lab hosts a NIDA-funded National Center of Excellence to examine the role of genetic differences in a variety of complex rat behaviors related to drug abuse (www.ratgenes.org). As of March 2020, we have already phenotyped and genotyped over ~7,000 rats as part of this project, and have secured funding to collect an additional 8,000 rats. In addition, we have previously collected similar data from more than 4,000 rats from a different population as well as several thousand mice and are now in the process of collecting similar data on over 5,000 zebra fish. In addition to genotypes at millions of SNP markers, and complex behavioral observations spanning weeks to months, we are also examining RNASeq (including single cell RNASeq), Epigenetic, microbiome and metaboloic data from these populations. The analysis, integration and development of new methods for analysis create numerous opportunities for bioinformatics projects and interactions with the bench scientists who are creating these data. We also collecting human genetic data and are exploring various methods for integrating human and non-human datasets.
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