About:

Primary interest is to look for connection between genetic factors and human psychiatric disorders or behaviors. Current research project is the genetic studies of bipolar disease (BD) using molecular genetics, genomics and bioinformatics approaches. We reported initial finding of association between G72 and BD. We developed a series of bioinformatics tools for complex diseases study (http://bioinfo.bsd.uchicago.edu). Animal model, expression profiling, DNA copy number studies, and new bioinformatics tools are under development in this lab. Integration of the varieties of tools and data will hopefully lead us to the identification of some disease susceptibility genes. Such findings will lead to improvement of the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric diseases.

1. Xia JH, Liu CY, Tang BS, Pan Q, Huang L, Dai HP, Zhang BR, Xie W, Hu DX, Zheng D, Shi XL, Wang DA, Xia K, Yu KP, Liao XD, Feng Y, Yang YF, Xiao JY, Xie DH, Huang JZ. Mutations in the gene encoding gap junction protein beta-3 associated with autosomal dominant hearing impairment. Nat Genet. 1998 Dec;20(4):370-3.

2. Liu CY, Badner JA, Christian SL, Guroff JJ, Detera-Wadleigh SD, Gershon ES. Fine mapping supports previous linkage evidence for a bipolar disorder susceptibility locus on 13q32. Am J Med Genet. 2001 May 8;105(4):375-80.

3. Hattori E*, Liu CY*, Badner J.A., Bonner T.I., Christian S.L., Maheshwari M., Detera-Wadleigh S. D., Gibbs R. A., Gershon E.S., Polymorphisms at the G72/G30 gene locus on 13q33 are associated with Bipolar disorder in two independent pedigree series. American Journal of Human Genetics 2003 (*equal contribution) 72:1131-1140.

4.  Liu CY, Bonner T.I., Nguyen T., Lyons J.L., Christian S.L., Gershon E.S., DNannotator: annotation software tool kit for regional genomic sequences. Nucleic Acids Research. 2003. 31(13):3729-3735.

5.  Nguyen T., Liu CY, Gershon E.S., McMahon F.J. Frequency Finder: A multi-source web application for collection of public allele frequencies of SNP markers. Bioinformatics. 2004. 20(3):439–443.

6.  Zhang RF., Zhu Z., Zhu HM., Nguyen T., Yao FX, Xia K., Liang DS, Liu CY. SNP Cutter: A Comprehensive Tool for SNP PCR-RFLP Assay Design. Nucleic Acids Research. 2005. 33(Web Server issue):W489-92

7. Shi J, Hattori E, Zou H, Badner JA, Christian SL, Gershon ES, Liu CY. Association Analysis of 19 Cholinergic Genes with Bipolar Disorder. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2006. (Accepted).

8. Yao FX, Zhang RF, Zhu ZH, Xia K, Liu CY. MutScreener: primer design tool for PCR- direct sequencing. 2006. (in print)