Santhosh Girirajan

Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Associate Professor of Anthropology

Santhosh Girirajan

Research Summary

Understanding the genetic basis of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Huck Graduate Students

Huck Affiliations

Links

Publication Tags

Genes Phenotype Drosophila Autistic Disorder Intellectual Disability Brain Gene Mutation Genome Autism Spectrum Disorder Exome Xenopus Laevis Defect Apoptosis Proteins Epilepsy Inborn Genetic Diseases Odds Ratio Neurodevelopmental Disorders Zebrafish Primates Genetic Association Studies Child Gene Dosage Schizophrenia

Most Recent Papers

Dissecting the complexity of CNV pathogenicity

Tanzeen Yusuff, Georgios Kellaris, Santhosh Girirajan, Nicholas Katsanis, 2021, Current Opinion in Genetics and Development on p. 79-87

Birt-Hogg-Dubé symptoms in Smith-Magenis syndrome include pediatric-onset pneumothorax

Brenda Finucane, Juliann M. Savatt, Hermela Shimelis, Santhosh Girirajan, Scott M. Myers, 2021, American Journal of Medical Genetics, Part A on p. 1922-1924

Functional assessment of the "two-hit" model for neurodevelopmental defects in Drosophila and X. laevis

Lucilla Pizzo, Micaela Lasser, Tanzeen Yusuff, Matthew Jensen, Phoebe Ingraham, Emily Huber, Mayanglambam Dhruba Singh, Connor Monahan, Janani Iyer, Inshya Desai, Siddharth Karthikeyan, Dagny J. Gould, Sneha Yennawar, Alexis T. Weiner, Vijay Kumar Pounraja, Arjun Krishnan, Melissa M. Rolls, Laura Anne Lowery, Santhosh Girirajan, 2021, PLoS Genetics on p. e1009112

The chromatin remodeler ISWI acts during Drosophila development to regulate adult sleep

Naihua N. Gong, Leela Chakravarti Dilley, Charlette E. Williams, Emilia H. Moscato, Milan Szuperak, Qin Wang, Matthew Jensen, Santhosh Girirajan, Tiong Yang Tan, Matthew A. Deardorff, Dong Li, Yuanquan Song, Matthew S. Kayser, 2021, Science advances

Gene discoveries in autism are biased towards comorbidity with intellectual disability

Matthew Jensen, Corrine Smolen, Santhosh Girirajan, 2020, Journal of Medical Genetics on p. 647-652

An evolutionary driver of interspersed segmental duplications in primates

Stuart Cantsilieris, Susan M. Sunkin, Matthew E. Johnson, Fabio Anaclerio, John Huddleston, Carl Baker, Max L. Dougherty, Jason G. Underwood, Arvis Sulovari, Pinghsun Hsieh, Yafei Mao, Claudia Rita Catacchio, Maika Malig, Annemarie E. Welch, Melanie Sorensen, Katherine M. Munson, Weihong Jiang, Santhosh Girirajan, Mario Ventura, Bruce T. Lamb, Ronald A. Conlon, Evan E. Eichler, 2020, Genome Biology

Drosophila models of pathogenic copynumber variant genes show global and nonneuronal defects during development

Tanzeen Yusuff, Matthew Jensen, Sneha Yennawar, Lucilla Pizzo, Siddharth Karthikeyan, Dagny J. Gould, Avik Sarker, Erika Gedvilaite, Yurika Matsui, Janani Iyer, Zhi Chun Lai, Santhosh Girirajan, 2020, PLoS Genetics

NCBP2 modulates neurodevelopmental defects of the 3q29 deletion in Drosophila and Xenopus laevis models

Mayanglambam Dhruba Singh, Matthew Jensen, Micaela Lasser, Emily Huber, Tanzeen Yusuff, Lucilla Pizzo, Brian Lifschutz, Inshya Desai, Alexis Kubina, Sneha Yennawar, Sydney Kim, Janani Iyer, Diego E. Rincon-Limas, Laura Anne Lowery, Santhosh Girirajan, 2020, PLoS Genetics

Dissecting the genetic basis of comorbid epilepsy phenotypes in neurodevelopmental disorders

Julie Chow, Matthew Jensen, Hajar Amini, Farhad Hormozdiari, Osnat Penn, Sagiv Shifman, Santhosh Girirajan, Fereydoun Hormozdiari, 2019, Genome Medicine on p. 65

Molecular basis for phenotypic similarity of genetic disorders

Vijay Kumar Pounraja, Santhosh Girirajan, 2019, Genome Medicine on p. 24

Most-Cited Papers

Sporadic autism exomes reveal a highly interconnected protein network of de novo mutations

Brian J. O ’ Roak, Laura Vives, Santhosh Girirajan, Emre Karakoc, Niklas Krumm, Bradley P. Coe, Roie Levy, Arthur Ko, Choli Lee, Joshua D. Smith, Emily H. Turner, Ian B. Stanaway, Benjamin Vernot, Maika Malig, Carl Baker, Joshua M. Akey, Elhanan Borenstein, Mark J. Rieder, Deborah A. Nickerson, Raphael Bernier, Jay Shendure, Evan E. Eichler, 2012, Nature on p. 246-250

A copy number variation morbidity map of developmental delay

Gregory M. Cooper, Bradley P. Coe, Santhosh Girirajan, Jill A. Rosenfeld, Tiffany H. Vu, Carl Baker, Charles Williams, Heather Stalker, Rizwan Hamid, Vickie Hannig, Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Patricia Bader, Elizabeth McCracken, Dmitriy Niyazov, Kathleen Leppig, Heidi Thiese, Marybeth Hummel, Nora Alexander, Jerome Gorski, Jennifer Kussmann, Vandana Shashi, Krys Johnson, Catherine Rehder, Blake C. Ballif, Lisa G. Shaffer, Evan E. Eichler, 2011, Nature Genetics on p. 838-846

Exome sequencing in sporadic autism spectrum disorders identifies severe de novo mutations

Brian J. O'Roak, Pelagia Deriziotis, Choli Lee, Laura Vives, Jerrod J. Schwartz, Santhosh Girirajan, Emre Karakoc, Alexandra P. MacKenzie, Sarah B. Ng, Carl Baker, Mark J. Rieder, Deborah A. Nickerson, Raphael Bernier, Simon E. Fisher, Jay Shendure, Evan E. Eichler, 2011, Nature Genetics on p. 585-589

Phenotypic heterogeneity of genomic disorders and rare copy-number variants

Santhosh Girirajan, Jill A. Rosenfeld, Bradley P. Coe, Sumit Parikh, Neil Friedman, Amy Goldstein, Robyn A. Filipink, Juliann S. McConnell, Brad Angle, Wendy S. Meschino, Marjan M. Nezarati, Alexander Asamoah, Kelly E. Jackson, Gordon C. Gowans, Judith A. Martin, Erin P. Carmany, David W. Stockton, Rhonda E. Schnur, Lynette S. Penney, Donna M. Martin, Salmo Raskin, Kathleen Leppig, Heidi Thiese, Rosemarie Smith, Erika Aberg, Dmitriy M. Niyazov, Luis F. Escobar, Dima El-Khechen, Kisha D. Johnson, Robert R. Lebel, Kiana Siefkas, Susie Ball, Natasha Shur, Marianne McGuire, Campbell K. Brasington, J. Edward Spence, Laura S. Martin, Carol Clericuzio, Blake C. Ballif, Lisa G. Shaffer, Evan E. Eichler, 2012, New England Journal of Medicine on p. 1321-1331

De novo pathogenic SCN8A mutation identified by whole-genome sequencing of a family quartet affected by infantile epileptic encephalopathy and SUDEP

Krishna R. Veeramah, Janelle E. O'Brien, Miriam H. Meisler, Xiaoyang Cheng, Sulayman D. Dib-Hajj, Stephen G. Waxman, Dinesh Talwar, Santhosh Girirajan, Evan E. Eichler, Linda L. Restifo, Robert P. Erickson, Michael F. Hammer, 2012, American Journal of Human Genetics on p. 502-510

Human copy number variation and complex genetic disease

Santhosh Girirajan, Catarina D. Campbell, Evan E. Eichler, 2011, Annual Review of Genetics on p. 203-226

Relative burden of large CNVs on a range of neurodevelopmental phenotypes

Santhosh Girirajan, Zoran Brkanac, Bradley P. Coe, Carl Baker, Laura Vives, Tiffany H. Vu, Neil Shafer, Raphael Bernier, Giovanni B. Ferrero, Margherita Silengo, Stephen T. Warren, Carlos S. Moreno, Marco Fichera, Corrado Romano, Wendy H. Raskind, Evan E. Eichler, 2011, PLoS Genetics on p. e1002334

Refinement and discovery of new hotspots of copy-number variation associated with autism spectrum disorder

Santhosh Girirajan, Megan Y. Dennis, Carl Baker, Maika Malig, Bradley P. Coe, Catarina D. Campbell, Kenneth Mark, Tiffany H. Vu, Can Alkan, Ze Cheng, Leslie G. Biesecker, Raphael Bernier, Evan E. Eichler, 2013, American Journal of Human Genetics on p. 221-237

Support for the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor hypofunction hypothesis of schizophrenia from exome sequencing in multiplex families

Andrew E. Timms, Michael O. Dorschner, Jeremy Wechsler, Kyu Yeong Choi, Robert Kirkwood, Santhosh Girirajan, Carl Baker, Evan E. Eichler, Olena Korvatska, Katherine W. Roche, Marshall S. Horwitz, Debby W. Tsuang, 2013, JAMA Psychiatry on p. 582-590

Exonic deletions in AUTS2 cause a syndromic form of intellectual disability and suggest a critical role for the C terminus

Gea Beunders, Els Voorhoeve, Christelle Golzio, Luba M. Pardo, Jill A. Rosenfeld, Michael E. Talkowski, Ingrid Simonic, Anath C. Lionel, Sarah Vergult, Robert E. Pyatt, Jiddeke Van De Kamp, Aggie Nieuwint, Marjan M. Weiss, Patrizia Rizzu, Lucilla E.N.I. Verwer, Rosalina M.L. Van Spaendonk, Yiping Shen, Bai Lin Wu, Tingting Yu, Yongguo Yu, Colby Chiang, James F. Gusella, Amelia M. Lindgren, Cynthia C. Morton, Ellen Van Binsbergen, Saskia Bulk, Els Van Rossem, Olivier Vanakker, Ruth Armstrong, Soo Mi Park, Lynn Greenhalgh, Una Maye, Nicholas J. Neill, Kristin M. Abbott, Susan Sell, Roger Ladda, Darren M. Farber, Patricia I. Bader, Tom Cushing, Joanne M. Drautz, Laura Konczal, Patricia Nash, Emily De Los Reyes, Melissa T. Carter, Elizabeth Hopkins, Christian R. Marshall, Lucy R. Osborne, Karen W. Gripp, Devon Lamb Thrush, Sayaka Hashimoto, Julie M. Gastier-Foster, Caroline Astbury, Bauke Ylstra, Hanne Meijers-Heijboer, Danielle Posthuma, Björn Menten, Geert Mortier, Stephen W. Scherer, Evan E. Eichler, Santhosh Girirajan, Nicholas Katsanis, Alexander J. Groffen, Erik A. Sistermans, 2013, American Journal of Human Genetics on p. 210-220

News Articles Featuring Santhosh Girirajan

Jun 24, 2020

Genes affecting brains and brawn?

Genes located in "copy number variants" (CNVs) — parts of chromosomes that are missing in some individuals and duplicated in others — that are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders affect more than just brain development, according to new research..

Full Article

Sep 26, 2019

Apparent new rise in autism may not reflect true prevalence

New statistics on autism prevalence in the United States suggest a dramatic rise in the number of children with the condition. But it is unlikely that these numbers reflect a true rise in prevalence, experts say.

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Aug 19, 2019

Researchers Create Mini Livers To Test Disease Progression

Scientists have bioengineered miniature human livers – possibly for the first time. The livers were created by University of Pittsburgh researchers in an effort to move away from less reliable experiments on mouse livers.

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Aug 19, 2019

Pa. researchers create mini livers to test disease progression

Scientists have bioengineered miniature human livers - possibly for the first time. The livers were created by University of Pittsburgh researchers in an effort to move away from less reliable experiments on mouse livers.

Full Article

Aug 15, 2019

Girirajan Lab at Penn State Seeks to Bridge the Gap Between Fly and Human Genomes

For Dr. Santhosh Girirajan, a long flight on the way from Seattle to State College was a career-changing one.

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Jul 30, 2019

Bioinformatics and Genomics Student Inspires Journal Cover

The July 2019 issue of Genome Research features art inspired by the work of Penn State graduate student Vijay Kumar Pounraja.

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Jul 09, 2019

New method helping to find deletions and duplications in the human genome

A new machine-learning method accurately identifies regions of the human genome that have been duplicated or deleted — known as copy number variants — that are often associated with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The new method, developed by researchers at Penn State, integrates data from several algorithms that attempt to identify copy number variants from exome-sequencing data — high-throughput DNA sequencing of only the protein-coding regions of the human genome.

Full Article

Sep 19, 2018

Family's 'Genetic Background' Sheds Light On Autism Symptoms

The total amount of rare mutations—deletions, duplications, or other changes to the DNA sequence—in a person’s genome can explain why individuals with a disease-associated mutation can have vastly different symptoms, according to new research.

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Sep 10, 2018

Family Genetics Key to Severity of Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders

A major international research effort headed by a team at the Pennsylvania State University now reports study data indicating that while the primary risk variant may make an individual more susceptible to developing a particular disorder, such as ASD, the variability and severity of symptoms will depend on their genetic background of accumulated rare mutations—such as deletions and duplications—which have been inherited from parents and grandparents.

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