Happy holidays from the Palmer Lab!
Palmer Lab members enjoyed time together at the annual holiday party on December 18, 2025. Food, fun…and rats!
Manuscript accepted in Genetics
The manuscript titled “Beyond Mendel: a call to revisit the genotype-phenotype map through new experimental paradigms” was accepted for publication in Genetics.
11th annual P30 Center retreat – November 20, 2025
The 11th annual retreat for the NIDA Center of Excellence for Genetics, Genomics, and Epigenetics of Substance Use Disorders in Outbred Rats was held on Thursday, November 20, 2025 at the University of California San Diego.
Thank you to all who attended in person and remotely, and thank you to the session speakers and poster presenters! We hope you found the talks and discussions informative and made connections with new HS rats colleagues.
Palmer Lab attends SfN 2025 in San Diego
Palmer Lab members attended SfN/Neuroscience 2025 at the San Diego Convention Center, November 16 – 19 2025.
Did you visit us at the RATTACA booth to support the HS rats P30 center?
Palmer Lab attends CTC 2025 in Barcelona, Spain
The 22nd Annual Meeting of the Complex Trait Community (CTC) was held October 21 to 24, 2025 at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain in collaboration with the Rat Genomics Community.
Palmer Lab members Dr. Palmer, Dr. Oksana Polesskaya, Dr. Thiago Sanches, Dr. Montana Lara, Dr. Zachary Tatom, and Apurva Chitre attended and presented in person.
See the CTC 2025 photo album!
Manuscript accepted in Nature Communications
The manuscript titled “Genetic architecture and mechanisms of host-microbiome interactions from a multi-cohort analysis of outbred laboratory rats” was published in Nature Communications. (updated 12/18/25)
Authors include current Palmer Lab members: Denghui Chen, Apurva Chitre, Benjamin Johnson, Thiago Missfeldt Sanches, Oksana Polesskaya, and Abraham Palmer.
Congratulations!
Manuscript accepted in Addiction Neuroscience
The manuscript titled “Sex-specific transcriptional signatures of oxycodone persist during withdrawal and abstinence in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of heterogeneous stock rats” was accepted in Addiction Neuroscience.
Authors: Tara C. Delorme, Snehal Sambare, Benjamin R. Williams, Mackenzie C. Gamble, Lieselot L.G. Carrette, Leah C Solberg Woods, Lisa Maturin, Abraham A. Palmer, Olivier George, Ryan W. Logan
Congratulations!
U01 grant awarded with Dr. Abraham Palmer as MPI
A U01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was awarded to Dr. Giordano de Guglielmo (contact MPI), with Abraham Palmer as one of several MPIs.
The grant is titled “The Genetic Basis of Opioid Dependence Vulnerability in a Rodent Model” and it will start September 30, 2025 and end on May 31, 2030.
[This is a renewal of “The Genetic Basis of Opioid Dependence Vulnerability in a Rodent Model” (U01DA045300), awarded to Dr. Peter Kalivas, Medical University of South Carolina, from 2018-2024.]
Congratulations!
R01 grant awarded with Dr. Abraham Palmer as a co-investigator
A new R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) was awarded to Dr. Lieselot Carrette, with Dr. Abraham Palmer as co-investigator.
The grant is titled “Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Outbred Rats with Variable Vulnerability to Compulsive Alcohol Use” and it will start September 20, 2025 and end on August 31, 2029.
Congratulations!
Dr. Brittany Leger successfully defends her thesis!
Dr. Brittany Leger successfully defended her thesis titled “Utilizing a network biology framework to integrate GWAS signal across species, variants, and traits” on September 15, 2025.
Congratulations, Dr. Leger!
See additional photos in the Photo Gallery!