PsyGenOmics

In addition to the recent PGC Outreach Committee report, here’s another useful resource for science communication in psychiatric genetics, this PGC webinar on the topic

Clear communication is essential in a field as sensitive and complex as psychiatric genetics.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQW...

From Genomes to Conversations: Outreach and Engagement in Psychiatric Genetics - Behavior Genetics Outreach in psychiatric genetics bridges the gaps across research advancements, clinical practice, and public understanding. Effective communication with a range of audiences faces multiple challenges...

New report by the PGC outreach committee:
From Genomes to Conversations: Outreach and Engagement in Psychiatric Genetics (2026)

An important contribution on why dialogue, and responsible communication must be integral to psychiatric genetics.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

It’s Carnival in the Rheinland and of course we celebrated 🎭
Yesterday we swapped lab coats and computers for costumes and balloons. @aydaabol.bsky.social designed and made her beautiful flower costume herself and very deservedly took 2nd place in the costume competition.

🌟for our last portrait, @fg-pgc.bsky.social is back in Germany @unibonn.bsky.social, where Dr EVA BEINS @evabeins.bsky.social studies #genetics and #microglia in #depression & #bipolardisorder. Think #brain #immune cells and #mentalhealth 🧠🧬👨‍🎓

🧠... our next young #functionalgenomics brain is Dr FATIMA MOHAMEDELMUGADAM from @unibonn.bsky.social in Germany🌟 She is interested in how genetic variants in different populations of the world contribute to #autism and #ADHD in kids👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

So, who are the the Functional Genomics Working Group?

🎯Our goal is to understand how genes🧬, cells🦠and molecules💠contribute to psychiatric disorders🧠

We work with other PGC groups and different 'omics data (methylation, cytometry, single cell etc.) to do this🧪

🧵1/3

Before we get started, let’s introduce our two Social Media Reps - @natashaberthold.bsky.social and @evacschulte.bsky.social!

We're here for the #functionalgenomics🧬, and #Science #Communication📡is a🔑key part!

💫Check out their profiles💫

A late post from this year’s World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics in Mexico! 🇲🇽
@evacschulte.bsky.social was there and got us this snapshot from our colleague @evabeins.bsky.social’s great presentation on the role of microglia in depression. 🧠🧫
We can't wait for WCPG26 in Glasgow! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
#WCPG25

@evacschulte.bsky.social is at ASHG 2025 in Boston - make sure to stop by at her poster and learn more about ongoing work on ✨Lipids as a link between genetic risk factors and mental health disorders ✨

🧬🧠

#ASHG2025 @geneticssociety.bsky.social

@lea202.bsky.social is taking us to the functional side of psychiatric genetics today with her poster on ✨ massively parallel characterization of common risk variants for mental health disorders in glutamatergic neuron ✨at @ecnp.eu

🧠🧫🧬

#ECNP2025

Join @kilarski.bsky.social for her poster presentation today on her project “Expression and splicing outlier analysis in whole-blood transcriptomes of individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders” located at the psychiatric genetics section! 🧠🧬🌌 @ecnp.eu

#ECNP2025

Our PhD student
@anoja.bsky.social
presented her first ever conference poster today at @ecnp.eu 🎊🧠📊
There was tons of interest in her work on:
✨ Molecular characterization of a “severe psychosis” subgroup in the PsyCourse study ✨
#ECNP2025

Congrats to @maheshgouda.bsky.social for winning a @ecnp.eu excellence award 🏆for his poster titled:

✨Transcriptomics highlights immune cell contribution to lithium response in bipolar disorder ✨

🧬👨‍🔬🧠

#ECNP2025

🎓👏 We’re proud to announce that our colleague Khaoula Ferchichi successfully defended her PhD last Tuesday!
Big congratulations to Dr. Ferchichi on this huge achievement🥳🥂

Last week, Fatima joined the @eventswcs.bsky.social CRISPR screen course in Hinxton.
The course brought together PhD students and postdocs from around the world to dive into pooled and arrayed CRISPR screening.
A great opportunity to learn, connect, and bring new expertise back to the lab! 🧬✨

Last Friday our group swapped laptops and pipettes for axes 🪓🎯
At our belated summer outing we had a blast trying out axe throwing together. And fittingly, the three wisest (not oldest 😉) members of the team took home the win in one of our competitions. There is proof in the pictures! 🪓👑

☀️ We are happy to have Jente Meijer from the Bonn–Melbourne Joint PhD Program visiting us in Bonn this week! ☀️
Her talk “Towards precision psychiatry using multi-view clustering approaches” was a wonderful opportunity to learn how machine learning can be applied in psychiatry. 🎓🧠💻

Genomics yields biological and phenotypic insights into bipolar disorder - Nature Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this great new paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🙏 Our collaborators (2/2) @renatopolimanti.bsky.social @ripkelab.bsky.social @popgemlab.bsky.social @usedforglue.bsky.social @ntrbiopsy.bsky.social @srijansen.bsky.social @florishuider.bsky.social @yf-is-fy.bsky.social @karmelchoi.bsky.social @kritikasingh.bsky.social

🙏 Our collaborators (1/2) @evacschulte.bsky.social @psygenomics.bsky.social @annadocherty.bsky.social@klehto.bsky.social @ymilaneschi.bsky.social @jonicoleman.bsky.social @markjamesadams.bsky.social @cathrynlewis.bsky.social @docknowles.bsky.social @mcintosh2001.bsky.social @fstreit.bsky.social

✨Psygenomics Lab escapes the psych ward! ✨

We had a lot of fun at our early Christmas outing at the psychiatry-themed escape room! 🧠🕵️‍♀️🎄

Next-generation phenotyping integrated in a national framework for patients with ultrarare disorders improves genetic diagnostics and yields new molecular findings - Nature Genetics Exome sequencing within a structured diagnostic process for rare diseases in Germany shows how facial image analysis and machine learning can guide variant prioritization and uncover many ultrarare di...

Congratulations to the TRANSLATE-NAMSE team and thank you for this fascinating paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Third Law is that you are likely to get volunteered for new work when you are not present at the committee meeting

Quote by Lewis Thomas on mint green background: „The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.“

Well, that was a blast! Thank you everyone at #eshg2024 for 4 days of inspiring and insightful talks and posters! We‘re proud to have contributed as well with a couple of posters, one of which you can see here, obscured by Laura @kilarski.bsky.social ;) Looking forward to the next one in Milan!

Getting excited about ESHG 2024! #eshg2024

Forgot the hashtag: #CRISPR24 🙈

A young female researcher standing behind a lectern giving a talk at a conference.

Eva and lea202.bsky.social are at the Wellcome CRISPR conference (coursesandconferences.wellcomeconnectingscience.org/event/crispr...) right now, where Lea presented our project on high-throughput functional annotation of schizophrenia risk genes using CRISPR knock-out screens.

Thank you!