Est. 2018
Structural, systemic and everyday racism exists in our wider society, and science is not immune from this problem. Injustice, inequality and intolerance related to sex and gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin are sad realities. The tragic moments when lives are lost due to hate and inequality remind us to tackle discrimination in all its forms, however, these moments pass too easily in the daily stream of news and events. As researchers in the mental health sector and the broader neuroscience community, we have a critical role in educating our society and influencing social policy to combat racism and inequality. We recognize this responsibility, and we are committed to address racism directly and immediately when it occurs and to reduce inequality and injustice in our greater communities in any way we can.
About
Work in the Klengel Lab focuses on the underlying molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric diseases and towards the development of novel preventive and therapeutic approaches.
Psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent; yet, our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms leading to the development of these devastating disorders is unfortunately scarce. As a consequence, we also currently lack effective preventive and therapeutic strategies, which leads to an enormous burden for individuals, families, and our societies. The goal of our group is to contribute to a better understanding of psychiatric diseases and thus better interventions. Pursuing a translational approach, we integrate clinically derived data sets and samples, animal models and a diverse set of molecular approaches to identify factors contributing on the molecular level to risk or resilience for psychiatric diseases.
Open Positions
People
Weiqian
Weiqian Jiang, PhD - Postdoctoral Researcher
McLean Hospital
Gabe
Gabriel Bronk, PhD - Postdoctoral Researcher
McLean Hospital
Almudena
Almudena Campuzano Jimenez, B.Sc. - Research Master in Brain and Cognitive Sciences - U Amsterdam
McLean Hospital
Faiza
Faiza Weilenmann, B.Sc. - Master’s student in Biomedical Sciences (Big Biomedical Data Analysis) - U Amsterdam
McLean Hospital
Leonie
Leonie Dams, B.Sc. - Master’s student in Biomedical Sciences (Big Biomedical Data Analysis) - U Amsterdam
McLean Hospital
Lauren
Lauren Remijas, B.S. - Master’s student in Biomedical Sciences (Big Biomedical Data Analysis) - U Amsterdam
McLean Hospital
Alex
Alexandria Profetto, B.S. - Research Assistant
McLean Hospital
Kavita
Kavita Basant, BSc - Master’s student in Biomedical Sciences (Big Biomedical Data Analysis) - U Amsterdam
McLean Hospital
Daisy
Daisy Shu Dan, BSc - Research Assistant (together with Sabina Berretta)
McLean Hospital
David
David Rau, MD Student
University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, Department of Psychiatry
Joy
Joy Otten, MSc, PhD Student,
University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, Department of Psychiatry (Joy did her Masters with us before)
ResearchGate | NCBI | Email
Roy
Roy Lardenoije, PhD - Postdoctoral researcher
University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, Department of Psychiatry
ResearchGate | NCBI | Email
Claudia
Claudia Klengel, MD - Lab Manager (Together with Kerry Ressler)
McLean Hospital
ResearchGate | NCBI | Email
Torsten
Torsten Klengel MD, PhD - Principle Investigator
Google Scholar | ResearchGate | NCBI | Email
You
You are interested in Neurobiology, Psychiatric Disorders, and Molecular Biology? - Become a Lab Member!
If you are interested in working with us, please contact us. We are always looking for curious and motivated researchers.
Former Lab Members
Melanie Bueckner, MSc - Research Assistant
Lakshmi Haferman, BSc - Research Assistant
Peter Durning, BSc - Research Assistant
Sharvari Narendra, MSc - Undergraduate Researcher
Giovanie Yacorps - Undergraduate Researcher
Michelle Smulders MSc - Masters Student Bioinformatics
Laura Koolman, MSc - Masters Student Bioinformatics
Megan Shevenell, MSc - Research Assistant
Projects
Translational Environmental Epigenetics
Environmental factors strongly contribute to the development of psychiatric disorders. Evidence suggest that environmental cues as early as in antecedent generations and throughout the lifespan can substantially influence developmental trajectories towards health and disease. We are specifically interested in the effects of early life stress and how these adverse factors influence the risk for stress-related disorders including major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, how the environment affects long-term brain function remains unclear. We focus on epigenetic changes, broadly defined as functionally relevant changes to our genome without alterations of its sequence. In particular, we investigate DNA methylation profiles in humans and animal models to detect epigenetic signatures that are predictive of disease trajectories or provide insight into disease mechanism.
Non-Coding RNAs in the Mammalian Brain
Only about 2% of our genome is actively translated into proteins, however, up to 80% of the entire genome is transcribed into RNA. Despite good evidence for a portion of our DNA being indeed “junk-DNA”, more recent evidence suggest that the non-coding part of our genome has relevant function in genome stability, regulation and overall function. Among the broad variety of non-coding RNAs expressed from the mammalian genome, we focus on circular RNAs, which form a unique closed-loop structure. Circular RNAs are expressed from many neuron-specific loci and show an enrichment in the brain. However, their function is largely unknown. We investigate circular RNAs in post-mortem brain tissue and in animal models to better understand their role in the healthy brain as well as in disease.
Effects of Type and Timing of Childhood Maltreatment on Disease Trajectories
Childhood maltreatment is one of the most important environmental contributors to the development of a wide range of psychiatric disorders. However, not everyone exposed to traumatic events during childhood develops mental health problems. In addition, disease trajectories in individuals exposed to maltreatment show a broad variation in symptom type and severity later in life. This may be due to a specific impact of type and timing of maltreatment on later symptom development with discernable sensitive periods mediating the effects of maltreatment on outcomes. Using clinical data and animal models, we seek to understand how type and timing of environmental factors influence outcomes and how genetic and other molecular mechanisms interact with exposure to maltreatment.
Publications
PGC-PTSD GWAS paper published
The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium published a GWAS on PTSD including over 30,000 PTSD cases and 170,000 controls. Lead by the labs of Caroline Nievergelt, Karestan Koenen, Israel Liberzon and Kerry Ressler, this study shows that risk for PTSD after a traumatic event is partially heritable with a significant shared liability between PTSD and other psychiatric disorders. Notably, this study included individuals from diverse ethnic groups and suggest that the genetic risk for disease may be ancestry-specific. This is the bioRxiv link.
Effects of Infant Maltreatment across Generations in Monkeys
In collaboration with Mar Sanchez’ lab at the Yerkes National Primate Center at Emory University, we published a paper on the effects of infant maltreatment in rhesus monkeys on epigenetic programming across generations. Maltreatment in mothers leads to functional DNA methylation changes in FKBP5 in offspring even when they were raised by foster mothers providing evidence for intergenerational effects of maltreatment on epigenetic programming in non-human primates. This is the bioRxiv link.
Network
(Alphabetic)
Lucy Allbaugh | University of Dayton
Raul Andero | U Barcelona
Sabina Berretta | McLean Hospital | Harvard Medical School
Elisabeth Binder | Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
Susann Boretius | German Primate Center | University of Göttingen
Gregory Quirk | University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine
Kerry Ressler | McLean Hospital | Harvard Medical School
Mar Sanchez | Yerkes National Primate Center | Emory University
Carmen Sandi | EPFL Lausanne
Martin Teicher | McLean Hospital | Harvard Medical School