On Tuesday, September 17th, Prof. Lorna Lopez and her FamilyGenomics lab welcomed Dr Cristina Ruedell Reschke and her FutureNeuro reserach team from RCSI for a joint lab meeting here at Maynooth University. The group was delighted to also be joined by visiting Wellcome Trust Research Fellow Dr Marina Carpena Federal from the University of Pelotas, Brazil. Our researchers came together to foster a multi-disciplinary and multinational knowledge exchange on circadian rhythms and genetics in epilepsy, neurodevelopmental conditions and mental health.
After a brief welcome address by Prof. Lopez and some personal introductions, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow Dr Cathy Wyse from Maynooth University opened the meeting with an excellent summary on the University’s current projects on the Chronobiology of Mental Health. Her talk was followed by Research Assistant Aoife Brennan’s on the European Research Council-funded FamilySleeps project, which is centred around understanding the underlying biological basis of disrupted circadian rhythms in families to help address sleep disruption and other poor outcomes in families with autism. Research Assistants Seán Farrell and Christiane O’Brien then presented their work on Ambient-BD, a five-year collaborative project between The University of Edinburgh and Maynooth University funded by The Wellcome Trust, aimed at investigating the role of circadian rhythm changes in the trajectory of bipolar disorder. Research Assistant Dearbhla Brady, and Dr. Lopez’s Ph.D. students, Aung Myat Phyo and Jacob Kennedy, then took the opportunity to give the group a sneak peak of their poster presentations for the Irish Society of Human Genetics conference on the role of genetics in neurodevelopmental conditions.
Following this, Dr Reschke’s RCSI team presented their exciting and diverse work on understanding the role of circadian rhythm restoration as a therapy for epilepsy. The meeting was rounded off by Dr Marina Carpena’s presentation on her research on a multi-decade spanning project on “Sleep and mental health: exploring the life course association and biosocial mechanisms in a Brazilian birth cohort”.
During the subsequent joint lunch at Maynooth University’s iconic Pugin hall, the teams had much information as well as good food to digest. The animated discussions around the table led to new connections being forged among the young researchers from both teams and some great ideas for future collaborations.
The Family Genomics lab would like to thank Dr Reschke and her RCSI team for an insightful joint lab experience. We hope it was the first of many!
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