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Charles  R.  Farber
Degree(s): Ph.D.
Graduate School: University of California-Davis
Primary Appointment: Assistant Professor of Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine
Research Interests:
Genetics of complex disease, with an emphasis on osteoporosis and obesity; Genetics of gene expression; Systems biology of complex disease; Mouse models of complex disease

Email Address: crf2s@virginia.edu
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program(s)
  • Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Genetics
    • Research Description

    Genetics of complex disease
    Common diseases such as osteoporosis and obesity impart significant societal health burdens.  These diseases are , in part , regulated by genetic determinants and understanding their genetic basis is critical to the development of effective therapeutics.  In recent years , technological advances , such as sequencing the genomes of multiple species and the ability to perform bioassays in a massively parallel fashion , have made it possible to begin to understand disease in a systems context.  Systems-biology , an exciting new area of research and way of thinking , attempts to determine the direct and interactive roles of all cellular and physiological components (transcripts , protein , metabolites , etc.) in diseased and normal states using data from high-throughput genomic studies.  

    Our lab is using systems approaches to investigate the molecular basis of obesity , osteoporosis and the molecular interactions between adipose and bone in the mouse.  The goal of this work is to combine genetics and global gene expression profiling in the mouse to identify genes and pathways which influence these traits and mediate the relationship between fat and bone using techniques such as causality modeling between expression and physiological traits and generating disease focused gene co-expression networks.  An additional component of this work is testing hypotheses generated by systems-analyses using in vitro cell based assays and transgenic mouse models.

    Selected Publications
  • Farber CR, van Nas A, Ghazalpour A, Aten JE, Doss S, Sos B, Schadt EE, Ingram-Drake L, Davis RC, Horvath S, Smith DJ, Drake TA, Lusis AJ (2008) An Integrative Genetics Approach to Identify Candidate Genes Regulating Bone Density: Combining Linkage, Gene Expression and Association. J Bone Miner Res. Sep 3. [Epub ahead of print].
  • Ghazalpour A, Doss S, Kang H, Farber C, Wen PZ, Brozell A, Castellanos R, Eskin E, Smith DJ, Drake TA, Lusis AJ (2008) High-resolution mapping of gene expression using association in an outbred mouse stock. PLoS Genetics 4(8):e1000149.
  • Farber CR, Chitwood J, Lee SN, Verdugo RA, Islas-Trejo A, Rincon G, Lindberg I, Medrano JF (2008) Overexpression of Scg5 increases enzymatic activity of PCSK2 and is inversely correlated with body weight in congenic mice. BMC Genetics 9:34.
  • Farber CR, Lusis AJ (2008) Integrating global gene expression analysis and genetics. Advances in Genetics 60:571-601.
  • PubMed Link for this Faculty Member
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    Contact Information
      Office Address: PO Box 800717, 
      Office Phone: +1 434-243-8584

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