Benjamin Franklin Voight, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Pharmacology
Department: Pharmacology
Graduate Group Affiliations
Contact information
10-126 Translational Research Center
3400 Civic Center Boulevard, Building 421
Philadelphia, PA 19104
3400 Civic Center Boulevard, Building 421
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Office: 215-746-8083
Email:
bvoight@upenn.edu
bvoight@upenn.edu
Publications
Education:
BA (Mathematics)
University of Washington, 2001.
BS (Biology)
University of Washington, 2001.
PhD (Human Genetics)
University of Chicago, 2006.
Permanent linkBA (Mathematics)
University of Washington, 2001.
BS (Biology)
University of Washington, 2001.
PhD (Human Genetics)
University of Chicago, 2006.
Description of Research Expertise
Research InterestUsing statistical genetics, population genetics, and computational biology to understanding the biological underpinnings and evolutionary history of human phenotypes
Keywords
Population Genetics, Statistical Genetics, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Statistics, Metabolic Disorder, Auto-Immune Traits, Type-2 Diabetes, Obesity, Myocardial Infarction, Cholesterol Levels, Natural Selection, Demography, Genome-wide Association Study (GWAS), Next-Generation Sequencing, Phenotypic Extremes.
Research Summary
The central aim in my lab is to understand the genetic, biological, and evolutionary basis of metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune-mediated phenotypes in human populations. To build this understanding, the lab constructs computational and statistical tools grounded in principles of population biology and quantitative genetics and apply them to genetic data collected across thousands of entire human genomes.
My research has answered population genetic questions about recent demographic and selective events in human populations, and more recently I have focused on mapping risk alleles for common diseases, particularly type-2 diabetes and heart attack. I have also contributed to novel statistical approaches for population genetic inference and disease mapping studies, as well as leading the development of next generation sequencing and genotypic assay technologies designed to improve characterization of genetic variation in the human genome.
In the coming years, the lab activities will focus on developing informational and statistical tools which interrogate vast quantities of human genetic association data, together with other important information sources -- gene expression, protein-protein networks, Chip-SEQ, text-mining, epidemiology, and multiple phenotypic measurements in humans -- in order to construct credibly actionable information on pathways responsible for disease susceptibility.
Positions Available!
For the 2011-2012 academic year, my lab has openings for computational post-doctoral and computational research technician positions available immediately. Please see the following site for further details on how to apply.
The lab also has a number of potential graduate student rotation projects available, and I expect to be able to accept one student for the coming 2011-2012 academic year. Ideal students will have a strong background in computational sciences, and projects will be built around human genetic data, bioinformatic applications, statisical genetic analysis, epidemiology, and/or population and systems biology. Please contact me if you are interested.
Selected Publications
Cotsapas C, Voight BF, Rossin E, Lage K, Neale BM, Wallace C, Abecasis GR, Barrett JC, Behrens T, Cho J, De Jager PL, Elder JT, Graham RR, Gregersen P, Klareskog L, Siminovitch KA, van Heel DA, Wijmenga C, Worthington J, Todd JA, Hafler DA, Rich SS, Daly MJ: Pervasive sharing of genetic effects in autoimmune disease. PLoS Genetics 7(8): e1002254, Aug 2011.Neale BM, Rivas MA, Voight BF, Altshuler D, Devlin B, Orho-Melander M, Kathiresan S, Purcell SM, Roeder K, Daly MJ: Testing for an unusual distribution of rare variants. PLoS Genetics 7(3): e1001322, Mar 2011.
Guey LT, Kravic J, Melander O, Burtt NP, Laramie JM, Lyssenko V, Jonsson A, Lindholm E, Tuomi T, Isomaa B, Nilsson P, Almgren P, Kathiresan S, Groop L, Seymour AB, Altshuler D, Voight BF: Power in the phenotypic extremes: a simulation study of power in discovery and replication of rare variants. Genetic Epidemiology Feb 2011.
Voight BF, Scott LJ, Steinthorsdottir V, Morris AP, Dina C, Welch RP, Zeggini E, Huth C, Aulchenko YS, Thorleifsson G, McCulloch LJ, Ferreira T, Grallert H, Amin N, Wu G, Willer CJ, Raychaudhuri S, McCarroll SA, Langenberg C, Hofmann OM, Dupuis J, Qi L, Segrè AV, van Hoek M, Navarro P, Ardlie K, Balkau B, Benediktsson R, Bennett AJ, Blagieva R, Boerwinkle E, Bonnycastle LL, Bengtsson Boström K, Bravenboer B, Bumpstead S, Burtt NP, Charpentier G, Chines PS, Cornelis M, Couper DJ, Crawford G, Doney AS, Elliott KS, Elliott AL, Erdos MR, Fox CS, Franklin CS, Ganser M, Gieger C, Grarup N, Green T, Griffin S, Groves CJ, Guiducci C, Hadjadj S, Hassanali N, Herder C, Isomaa B, Jackson AU, Johnson PR, Jørgensen T, Kao WH, Klopp N, Kong A, Kraft P, Kuusisto J, Lauritzen T, Li M, Lieverse A, Lindgren CM, Lyssenko V, Marre M, Meitinger T, Midthjell K, Morken MA, Narisu N, Nilsson P, Owen KR, Payne F, Perry JR, Petersen AK, Platou C, Proença C, Prokopenko I, Rathmann W, Rayner NW, Robertson NR, Rocheleau G, Roden M, Sampson MJ, Saxena R, Shields BM, Shrader P, Sigurdsson G, Sparsø T, Strassburger K, Stringham HM, Sun Q, Swift AJ, Thorand B, Tichet J, Tuomi T, van Dam RM, van Haeften TW, van Herpt T, van Vliet-Ostaptchouk JV, Walters GB, Weedon MN, Wijmenga C, Witteman J, Bergman RN, Cauchi S, Collins FS, Gloyn AL, Gyllensten U, Hansen T, Hide WA, Hitman GA, Hofman A, Hunter DJ, Hveem K, Laakso M, Mohlke KL, Morris AD, Palmer CN, Pramstaller PP, Rudan I, Sijbrands E, Stein LD, Tuomilehto J, Uitterlinden A, Walker M, Wareham NJ, Watanabe RM, Abecasis GR, Boehm BO, Campbell H, Daly MJ, Hattersley AT, Hu FB, Meigs JB, Pankow JS, Pedersen O, Wichmann HE, Barroso I, Florez JC, Frayling TM, Groop L, Sladek R, Thorsteinsdottir U, Wilson JF, Illig T, Froguel P, van Duijn CM, Stefansson K, Altshuler D, Boehnke M, McCarthy MI; MAGIC investigators; GIANT Consortium.: Twelve type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci identified through large-scale association analysis. Nature Genetics 42(7): 579-89, Jul 2010.
The Myocardial Infarction Genetics (MIGen) Consoritum: Genome-wide association of early-onset myocardial infarction with single nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variants. Nature Genetics 41(3): 334-41, Mar 2009.
Kathiresan S, Melander O, Guiducci C, Surti A, Burtt NP, Rieder MJ, Cooper GM, Roos C, Voight BF, Havulinna AS, Wahlstrand B, Hedner T, Corella D, Tai ES, Ordovas JM, Berglund G, Vartiainen E, Jousilahti P, Hedblad B, Taskinen M-R, Newton-Cheh C, Salomaa V, Peltonen L, Groop L, Altshuler DM, Orho-Melander M: Six new loci associated with blood low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or triglycerides in humans. Nature Genetics 40(2): 189-97, Feb 2008.
de Bakker PIW, Ferreira MAR, Jia X, Neale BM, Raychaudhuri S, Voight BF: Practical aspects of imputation-driven meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies. Human Molecular Genetics 17(R2): R122-8, Oct 2008.
The Diabetes Genetics Initiative (DGI): Genome-wide association analysis identifies loci for type 2 diabetes and triglyceride levels. Science (New York, N.Y.) 316(5829): 1331-6, Jun 2007.
Voight BF, Kudaravalli S, Wen X, Pritchard JK: A map of recent positive selection in the human genome. PLoS Biology 4(3): e72, Mar 2006.
Voight BF, Adams AM, Frisse LA, Qian Y, Hudson RR, Di Rienzo A: Interrogating multiple aspects of variation in a full resequencing data set to infer human population size changes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(51): 18508-13, Dec 2005.