Christopher Baker

Christopher Baker, Ph.D. 

The Baker lab is interested in understanding how genetic variation manifests into phenotype with a focus on regulatory variation within the epigenome. Addiction is highly heritable, but our mechanistic understanding of the link between genetic variation, chromatin function, and predisposition to addiction is limited. With respect to addiction related research we are working to better understand how genetic variation impacts epigenomic mechanisms in the striatum using diverse mice as a model system. To investigate genetic loci critical for addiction related behavior, our aim is to identify cell-type and strain-specific variation using single cell approaches.