Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
For our next talk, in the BDI/CHG (gen)omics Seminar series, we will be hearing Eilie Wigdor, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, The Sanders Group and Dr Narjes Rohani, Postdoctoral Research Associate. The Sanders and Rinaldi labs. We’re delighted to host Emilie and Narges in what promises to be a great talk!
Talk title: Cellular and Developmental Context of Genetic Risk in Brain Disorders
Date: Tuesday 17 March 2026
Time: 9:30 – 10:30 am
Location: BDI/OxPop Seminar room 0
Bio: Dr Narjes Rohani is a postdoctoral research associate in the Sanders and Rinaldi labs, where she investigates the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Her work integrates multi-omic data, including bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing, single-cell chromatin accessibility, and bulk DNA sequencing, from brain tissues across developmental stages to understand when and how these conditions emerge. Ultimately, she aims to identify regulatory enhancers that may serve as potential therapeutic targets.
Abstract: Although thousands of GWAS variants for brain disorders have been identified, it remains unclear when and where in the brain these genetic effects are most active. To address this gap, we integrated GWAS data for a range of brain disorders with cell type– and developmental stage–specific ATAC-seq and RNA-seq data using stratified LD score regression and gene expression enrichment analyses. We identified the developmentally specific neuronal and non-neuronal cell populations in which genetic risk is concentrated. Our results reveal strong enrichment of psychiatric risk in postnatal excitatory neurons and distinct microglial contributions to neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, we identified an enhancer element that may serve as a potential therapeutic target for SOX5 haploinsufficient syndrome, demonstrating how single-cell and developmental stage–specific data can nominate biologically meaningful and clinically relevant regulatory regions.
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All members of the University are welcome to join, please let reception at BDI know you’re here for the seminar and sign-in. We hope you can join us!
We also now have a mailing list –
To be added, ping genomics_bdi_whg-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk (with any message), you should get a bounce-back with three options to confirm your subscription. Follow any of those options, and with a bit of luck you should be signed up!
As a reminder, the (gen)omics seminar series runs every other Tuesday morning and is intended to increase interaction between individuals working in genomics across Oxford. We encourage in-person attendance where possible. There is time for discussion over, tea, coffee and pastries after the talks.
Hybrid Option:
Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford to encourage sharing of new and unpublished data. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the university.
Microsoft Teams meeting
teams.microsoft.com/meet/34860831816590?p=6hPeBaocoVaZWTWAlm
Meeting ID: 348 608 318 165 90
Passcode: WR2NA22f
