Genotyping Laboratory, Medical Genetics Institute
1. Head of Laboratory: Kent Taylor, PhD
Email: Kent.Taylor@cshs.org
Phone: 310-423-6695
2. Description of Lab: The laboratory provides high throughput genotyping data, database design, sequencing of candidate genes, statistical analyses, and bioinformatics to researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center through the GCRC as well as to researchers in the Medical Genetics Institute. Some of the projects are part of large, multi-center, national studies funded by the NIH, for example the Cardiovascular Health Study, the Insulin Resistance and Atherosclerosis Study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, the NHLBI CARE, SHARE, and STAMPEED Projects, the NIDDK IBD Genetics Consortium, and the International IBD Genetics Consortium. The largest projects involve the genetic contribution to Non-Mendelian/Complex Traits, for example inflammatory bowel disease, hypertension, coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, diabetic retinopathy, and other vision traits. The director is particularly interested in development of new technologies for gene identification, bioinformatics, and population genetics. In addition to the Caucasian population in Los Angeles, investigators associated with the laboratory are studying the Chinese population in LA, Chicago, and Taiwan, the Mexican-American population in LA, New York, and Puerto Rico, and the African-American population in LA and North Carolina.
Students accepted for projects in the laboratory will be required to learn computer scripting and coding languages, several database programs/technologies, techniques for analysis of haplotypes, statistical analysis methods for genome-wide association studies and candidate gene association studies, sequencing and methods for the analysis of sequencing data, and the use of bioinformatics for the integration of publicly-available data with the results of their own studies. Students accepted for projects in the Medical Genetics Institute may need to learn some of these mathematical technologies depending on the project.
3. Key Personnel: Kent D. Taylor, PhD; Jerome I. Rotter, MD; Xiuqing Guo, PhD; Leslie Raffel, MD; Dermot McGovern, MD, PhD.
