Naomi Wray

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Naomi Wray
Citizenship Australian
Education University of Edinburgh (BSc, 1984; PhD, 1989)
Cornell University (MS, 1986) [1]
Known forResearch on genetic architecture of complex traits
Scientific career
Fields Quantitative genetics
Institutions University of Queensland
Thesis Consequences of selection in finite populations with particular reference to closed nucleus herds of pigs  (1989)
Doctoral advisors Bill Hill
Robin Thompson

Naomi Ruth Wray is an Australian statistical geneticist at the University of Queensland, where she is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and an Affiliate Professor in the Queensland Brain Institute. She is also a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow and, along with Peter Visscher and Jian Yang, is one of the three executive team members of the NHMRC-funded Program in Complex Trait Genomics. [2] She is also the Michael Days Chair of Psychiatric Genetics at Oxford University. Naomi pioneered the use of polygenic scores in human genetics, and has made significant contributions to both the development of methods and their clinical use.

Contents

Education and career

Wray has a B.Sc. in Agricultural Science from the University of Edinburgh (1984), [3] and an M.S. in livestock genetics and statistics from Cornell University in 1986. [4] She earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Edinburgh where she worked on population genetics. [5] Her first academic career was in livestock genetics, before she transitioned her research to human genetics following the development of technology that allowed the direct study of DNA variation at scale. [6] Now, she primarily focusses on disorders of the brain, addressing the fundamental questions about why only certain people get common diseases, and why only certain people respond to treatment. [6] Wray joined the University of Queensland Brain Institute in 2011, prior to moving to the Institute of Molecular Bioscience (IMB) in 2015. From 2018-2023 she was the Head of the Centre for Population and Disease Genomics within IMB. Wray is now appointed at the University of Oxford as the Michael Davys Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. [7]

Her research primarily focuses on the development and application of quantitative genetics and genomics methodologies across complex diseases, disorders and traits, specifically psychiatric-related traits. [8]

Wray was one of the scientists who helped discover three new genes that increase the risk of sporadically developing motor neuron disease (MND), funding for which was raised through videos of "the ice bucket challenge" in 2014. [9] [10] She stated that researchers are "very hopeful that in the next phase of discovery, as sample sizes with measured DNA increase, that we'll discover more genes associated with MND". [9]

Wray directed the Program in Complex Trait Genomics (PCTG) which was funded as an NHMRC Program Grant from 2017-2022, and contributes to the International Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. She is a co-investigator on the Australian Genetics of Depression Study (AGDS), and is currently launching the AGDS-Cello project which focusses on establishing a cell line resource from participant with a detailed history of anti-depressant use and response measures. [7]

Selected publications

Awards and Honours

Wray is a Leadership Fellow at the NHMRC, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science as of 2016, [11] [12] and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences as of 2020. Awards include the Australian Neuroscience Society Nina Kondelos Award 2016 (awarded to female neuroscientists for outstanding contributions to basic or clinical neuroscience research), [6] the NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn Award for Leadership in Basic Science 2020, and the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics Ming Tsuang Lifetime Achievement Award 2021. [7] She is also a Clarivate Highly Cited researcher.

Related Research Articles

Genetic architecture is the underlying genetic basis of a phenotypic trait and its variational properties. Phenotypic variation for quantitative traits is, at the most basic level, the result of the segregation of alleles at quantitative trait loci (QTL). Environmental factors and other external influences can also play a role in phenotypic variation. Genetic architecture is a broad term that can be described for any given individual based on information regarding gene and allele number, the distribution of allelic and mutational effects, and patterns of pleiotropy, dominance, and epistasis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neurogenetics</span> Study of role of genetics in the nervous system

Neurogenetics studies the role of genetics in the development and function of the nervous system. It considers neural characteristics as phenotypes, and is mainly based on the observation that the nervous systems of individuals, even of those belonging to the same species, may not be identical. As the name implies, it draws aspects from both the studies of neuroscience and genetics, focusing in particular how the genetic code an organism carries affects its expressed traits. Mutations in this genetic sequence can have a wide range of effects on the quality of life of the individual. Neurological diseases, behavior and personality are all studied in the context of neurogenetics. The field of neurogenetics emerged in the mid to late 20th century with advances closely following advancements made in available technology. Currently, neurogenetics is the center of much research utilizing cutting edge techniques.

In multivariate quantitative genetics, a genetic correlation is the proportion of variance that two traits share due to genetic causes, the correlation between the genetic influences on a trait and the genetic influences on a different trait estimating the degree of pleiotropy or causal overlap. A genetic correlation of 0 implies that the genetic effects on one trait are independent of the other, while a correlation of 1 implies that all of the genetic influences on the two traits are identical. The bivariate genetic correlation can be generalized to inferring genetic latent variable factors across > 2 traits using factor analysis. Genetic correlation models were introduced into behavioral genetics in the 1970s–1980s.

The missing heritability problem arises from the difference between heritability estimates from genetic data and heritability estimates from twin and family data across many physical and mental traits, including diseases, behaviors, and other phenotypes. This is a problem that has significant implications for medicine, since a person's susceptibility to disease may depend more on the combined effect of all the genes in the background than on the disease genes in the foreground, or the role of genes may have been severely overestimated.

B K Thelma commonly known as Bittianda Kuttapa Thelma is a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, India. She is the Principal investigator and Co-ordinator of the Centre of excellence on Genomes Sciences and Predictive Medicine funded by the Govt. of India. She is also the Co-ordinator of a major project on newborn screening for inborn errors of metabolism in Delhi state which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of mandatory screening of newborns in the country and to generate epidemiological data for the testable IEMs in the genetically distinct Indian population, for the first time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela Sklar</span> American psychiatrist and neuroscientist

Pamela Sklar was an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She was Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and genetic and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She was also chief of the Division of Psychiatric Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Sklar is known for her large-scale gene discovery studies in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and for making some of the first statistically meaningful gene identifications in both mental illnesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer L. Martin</span> Australian molecular biologist

Professor Jennifer Louise "Jenny" Martin is an Australian scientist and academic. She was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales from 2019-2022. She is a former director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery at Griffith University. and a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Martin is Professor Emerita at the University of Queensland and adjunct professor at Griffith University. Her research expertise encompasses structural biology, protein crystallography, protein interactions and their applications in drug design and discovery.

Aleksandra Filipovska is an Australian scientist who is a professor, Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology and NHMRC Investigator at the University of Western Australia, heading a research group at the Telethon Kids Institute. Specializing in biochemistry and molecular biology, she has made contributions to the understanding of human mitochondrial genetics in health and disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Stow</span> Australian scientist

Jennifer Lea Stow is deputy director (research), NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and head of the Protein Trafficking and Inflammation laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), The University of Queensland, Australia. She received a PhD from Monash University in Melbourne in 1982, postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine (US) in the Department of Cell Biology. Her first faculty position was as an assistant professor at Harvard University in the Renal Unit, Departments of Medicine and Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Predictive genomics is at the intersection of multiple disciplines: predictive medicine, personal genomics and translational bioinformatics. Specifically, predictive genomics deals with the future phenotypic outcomes via prediction in areas such as complex multifactorial diseases in humans. To date, the success of predictive genomics has been dependent on the genetic framework underlying these applications, typically explored in genome-wide association (GWA) studies. The identification of associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms underpin GWA studies in complex diseases that have ranged from Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and Crohn's disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Goddard</span>

Michael Edward "Mike" Goddard is a professorial fellow in animal genetics at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Justin John Yerbury was an Australian molecular biologist who was spurred to follow a career in biological research when he discovered that his family has the genetic form of motor neurone disease (MND). He held the position of Professor in Neurodegenerative Disease at the University of Wollongong. He was diagnosed with MND himself in 2016, but continued to research until his death from the disease in 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polygenic score</span> Numerical score aimed at predicting a trait based on variation in multiple genetic loci

In genetics, a polygenic score (PGS) is a number that summarizes the estimated effect of many genetic variants on an individual's phenotype. The PGS is also called the polygenic index (PGI) or genome-wide score; in the context of disease risk, it is called a polygenic risk score or genetic risk score. The score reflects an individual's estimated genetic predisposition for a given trait and can be used as a predictor for that trait. It gives an estimate of how likely an individual is to have a given trait based only on genetics, without taking environmental factors into account; and it is typically calculated as a weighted sum of trait-associated alleles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queensland Brain Institute</span> Neuroscience research institute at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia

The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) is an Australian neuroscience research institute, located in Brisbane at the St Lucia campus of The University of Queensland (UQ). Founding director Professor Perry Bartlett established the QBI in 2003 with assistance from The University of Queensland, Queensland State Government, and Chuck Feeney, founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies. The purpose-built facility was commissioned in 2004 and on 19 November 2007, the building was opened by former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Visscher</span> Dutch-born Australian geneticist

Peter Martin Visscher is a Dutch-born Australian geneticist who is professor and chair of Quantitative Genetics at the University of Queensland. He is also a professorial research fellow at the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience and an affiliate professor at their Queensland Brain Institute.

In statistical genetics, linkage disequilibrium score regression is a technique that aims to quantify the separate contributions of polygenic effects and various confounding factors, such as population stratification, based on summary statistics from genome-wide association studies (GWASs). The approach involves using regression analysis to examine the relationship between linkage disequilibrium scores and the test statistics of the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the GWAS. Here, the "linkage disequilibrium score" for a SNP "is the sum of LD r2 measured with all other SNPs".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infinitesimal model</span> Quantitative genetic model developed by Ronald Fisher in 1918

The infinitesimal model, also known as the polygenic model, is a widely used statistical model in quantitative genetics and in genome-wide association studies. Originally developed in 1918 by Ronald Fisher, it is based on the idea that variation in a quantitative trait is influenced by an infinitely large number of genes, each of which makes an infinitely small (infinitesimal) contribution to the phenotype, as well as by environmental factors. In "The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance", the original 1918 paper introducing the model, Fisher showed that if a trait is polygenic, "then the random sampling of alleles at each gene produces a continuous, normally distributed phenotype in the population". However, the model does not necessarily imply that the trait must be normally distributed, only that its genetic component will be so around the average of that of the individual's parents. The model served to reconcile Mendelian genetics with the continuous distribution of quantitative traits documented by Francis Galton.

Jian Yang is a Chinese statistical geneticist and Professor of Statistical Genomics at the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, as well as an affiliated professor at the Queensland Brain Institute. He received the 2015 Ruth Stephens Gani Medal for his research on the "missing heritability" of complex traits. In 2017, he received the Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year from the Prime Minister of Australia for his work on the basis of genetic variation in complex human traits, such as obesity and schizophrenia. He has researched the contribution of numerous single nucleotide polymorphisms to variation in quantitative traits, such as human height, as well as the role of natural selection in driving genetic variation in such traits. He and his colleagues have also used genetic data on common diseases to study potential environmental risk factors for them.

Sarah Elizabeth Medland is Professor and Psychiatric Genetics Group Leader at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Herston, Brisbane, Australia. She played a major role in the development of the ENIGMA brain imaging consortium.

Lyn Robyn Griffiths is an Australian academic who serves as Distinguished Professor of molecular genetics at Queensland University of Technology, where she is director of the Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health, the Genomics Research Centre and the BridgeTech Programs. Griffiths is internationally renowned for her work in the discovery of the genetics of migraine headaches.

References

  1. "Naomi Wray". Program in Complex Trait Genomics. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  2. "Academy elects 28 new Fellows". AAHMS - Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. 14 October 2020. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
  3. "ORCID". orcid.org. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  4. Wray, Naomi Ruth (1986). Analysis of gestation lengths in American Simmental cattle (Thesis). OCLC   63341482.
  5. Wray, Naomi Ruth (1989). Consequences of selection in finite populations with particular reference to closed nucleus herds of pigs. University of Edinburgh. OCLC   556698761.
  6. 1 2 3 "Naomi Wray | St Hilda's College Oxford". www.st-hildas.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 "Professor Naomi Wray". qbi.uq.edu.au. 25 July 2024. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  8. "Naomi Wray". www.psych.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  9. 1 2 Wiedersehn, Sarah (27 July 2016). "Ice bucket challenge helps scientists find new clues into motor neurone disease". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  10. "Funds from ice bucket challenge aiding research into motor neurone disease". SBS News. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  11. "Professor Naomi Wray". Queensland Brain Institute. 19 August 2018. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  12. "Professor Naomi Ruth Wray". Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 19 August 2018.