Julio Rodríguez López

      I received my bachelor degree in Biology (specialized in molecular biology) in 2003 and my PhD in Biology in 2008, by the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. During my doctoral research, I worked in the area of human genetics, studying the genetics of complex diseases, with a focus on rheumatology disease. As a part of my PhD formation, I did a temporary stay in the Botnar Research Centre/Institute of Musculoskeletal Sciences of the University of Oxford, learning functional genomics techniques related with the study of different allelic expression assays. Result of this pre-doctoral training period, I have acquired a solid formation in genetics and published several first author publications.

After a postdoctoral period doing genetic engineering and microbiology in the Universidade de Vigo, and the Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) of Madrid (publications), I joined in 2012 to the Psychiatric Genetics group at the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Santiago de Compostela (IDIS) and Fundación Pública Galega de Medicina Xenómica, a multidisciplinary research group formed by biologists, technicians, clinical psychiatrists and psychologists.

My current scientific research is centered in the search and identification of rare variants of high penetrance-copy number variations (CNVs) and single nucleotide variants (SNVs)-, that could be involved in the pathogenesis of psychiatric diseases –mainly schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder or substance use disorder-. To accomplish this goal, we use genomic tools such as high-throughput genotyping or ultra-sequencing technology, which allow us the detection different variants in a wide number of samples, as well as doing the analysis of whole genome data.