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Email

jr13@bcm.edu

Positions

Associate Professor

HGSC:Faculty-General/Basic
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Houston, TX US

Associate Professor

Molecular and Human Genetics
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Core Scientist

Wisconsin National Primate Research Center
Madison, United States

Faculty Senator

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Houston, Texas United States

Faculty Member

Graduate Program in Genetics & Genomics
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Faculty Member

Graduate Program in Development, Disease Models & Therapeutics
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Education

BA from Northwestern University

01/1978 - Evanston, Illinois United States

PhD from Yale University

01/1989 - New Haven, CT United States

Anthropology

Professional Interests

• Primate models of human disease, especially psychiatric disorders, comparative primate genomics and evolutionary genetics

Professional Statement

My research is focused on the genetics and genomics of nonhuman primates. These species are widely used as animal models of disease because they are so similar genetically and physiologically to humans. For studies of neurobiology and behavior, infectious diseases, metabolic diseases and other common health problems, nonhuman primates provide unique and valuable experimental models. As the analysis of genetic mechanisms has become central to so much of both biomedical and basic biological research, detailed information about the genomics of nonhuman primates has become more important and more useful.

My laboratory is working on various aspects of primate genomics, including both basic comparative analyses and targeted research using primate models of human disease. I am one of the three co-leaders of the Primate Conservation and Sequencing Initiative. This is an international consortium of primatologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and experts in genome analysis including computational biologists and bioinformaticians. Our team includes people from 17 countries and is growing. Together we are conducting the largest survey to date of genomic diversity across primates. In Phase One of this project (Kuderna et al. 2023; Gao et al. 2023) we published analyses of deep whole genome sequences from 809 individuals representing 233 primate species, most of which are threatened with extinction. We are now continuing with Phase Two, expanding our studies to more species. This work has documented an unexpectedly high level of genetic variation within primate species, higher than the levels found in human populations. We are also investigating various other aspects of primate genetics and evolutionary biology (Kuderna et al. 2023). The same comparative data have also been shown to provide new insights into the genetics of disease in humans. Gao et al. (2023) showed that information about the composition of genetic variation in nonhuman primates is remarkably valuable in predicting which mutations in the human genome will cause disease and which are benign. Our program also includes a broad survey of population genomics across six species of Papio baboons in which we identified several new locations of between-species hybridization and gene flow (Sorensen et al. 2023). These studies add to our understanding of primate speciation as well as providing a model of gene flow between humans and Neanderthals.

In a separate project, we are conducting an extensive survey of genomic variation in the most widely studied nonhuman primate in biomedical research, the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). By sequencing the genomes or exomes of >2,000 rhesus macaques from various US research colonies we found hundreds of thousands of functionally significant genetic variants that can be used to examine the effects of specific genes on various disease-related phenotypes (Warren et al. 2020). Information regarding genetic variation, including changes in protein-coding sequences and putative regulatory sequences, in combination with other genomic data, makes all these primate species more useful for future biomedical research projects.

The third major line of research in my laboratory is the targeted analysis of specific nonhuman primate models of human genetic diseases. In collaboration with psychiatrists and neurobiologists, we have studied individual variation in behavior and neurophysiology among macaques and baboons (Rogers, 2018; Fox et al. 2021). The complex social behavior displayed by primates makes them outstanding subjects for neurobiological investigation (Oler et al., 2010; Rogers et al., 2013; Fawcett et al., 2014; Gunter et al., 2022), pointing to genetic mechanisms that may influence susceptibility to psychiatric disorders in people (Rogers et al., 2013; Fox et al. 2021). We are also analyzing primate models of inherited susceptibility to cancer (Ozirmak Lermi et al. 2022), retinal disorders and vision loss (Moshiri et al., 2019), endometriosis (Tapmeier et al. 2021) and other diseases. Our discovery and analyses of these primate models are generating novel information about potential treatments and therapies for use in human clinical practice.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Sørensen EF, Harris RA, Zhang L, Raveendran M, Kuderna LFK, (…), Munch K, Roos C, Rogers J "." Science. 2023;380:eabn8153. Pubmed PMID:
• Kuderna LFK, Gao H, Janiak MC, Kuhlwilm M, Orkin JD, (…), Rogers J, Farh KK, Marques Bonet T "." Science. 2023;380:906-913. Pubmed PMID:
• Gao H, Hamp T, Ede J, Schraiber JG, McRae J, (…), Rogers J, Marques-Bonet T, Farh KK "." Science. 2023;380:eabn8153. Pubmed PMID:
• Ozirmak Lermi N, Gray SB, Bowen CM, Reyes-Uribe L, Dray BK, Deng N, Harris RA, Raveendran M, Benavides F, Hodo CL, Taggart MW, Colbert Maresso K, Sinha KM, Rogers J, Vilar E "." PLoS Genet. 2022;18:e1010163. Pubmed PMID: