Alessandro Gialluisi

In the past I have worked both on mendelian disorders (investigating the epidemiology of autosomal recessive disorders and its relation with consanguinity) and on complex disorders (i.e. the genetic basis of hypnotizability). In the Language and Genetics Department I have the great opportunity to get more into behavioral genetics, the research field I love most. My Phd project is aimed at disentangling the genetic underpinnings of specific language-related disorders, with a main focus on dyslexia. This is accomplished by a Genome Wide Association Study on a sample of affected children, along with their healthy cotwins/siblings. In other words, I will examine a series of reading-related skills scored through psychometric scales and try to find significant statistical associations with specific polymorphisms in the genome. First we will examine a set of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), then we will move our focus towards Copy Number Variants (CNVs). This GWAS will help clarifying the genes associated with reading and language disabilities, whose molecular basis are still largely unknown.