Aaron Quinlan, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, University of Utah

SFARI Investigator Website

Aaron Quinlan is an associate professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah. Quinlan is also the associate director of the State of Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) Center for Genetic Discovery. He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. from Boston College where he focused on population genetics, new methods for emerging DNA sequencing technologies and the discovery and characterization of genetic variation. During his NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia, he developed expertise in structural variation of mammalian genomes and somatic genome mutation.

Quinlan started his laboratory at the University of Virginia in 2011 and began a faculty position at the University of Utah in early 2015. Broadly speaking, the Quinlan laboratory is interested in the development and application of new computational and statistical techniques for understanding the biology of genomes. His team tackles problems with practical importance to identify and understand genome variation, monitor chromosome evolution and mine genetic variation related to neurological and developmental disease.

Funded Projects

Interactions between WGS variation and polygenic risk in ASD

Awarded: 2017
Award Type: Research

SFARI Funded Publications

De novo structural mutation rates and gamete-of-origin biases revealed through genome sequencing of 2,396 families. Belyeu J.R., Brand H., Wang H., Zhao X., Pedersen B.S., Feusier J., Gupta M., Nicholas T.J., Brown J., Baird L., Devlin B., Sanders S., Jorde L.B., Talkowski M., Quinlan A.

Genome-wide de novo risk score implicates promoter variation in autism spectrum disorder. An J.Y., Lin K., Zhu L., Werling D., Dong S., Brand H., Wang H.Z., Zhao X., Schwartz G.B., Collins R.L., Currall B.B., Dastmalchi C., Dea J., Duhn C., Gilson M.C., Klei L., Liang L., Markenscoff-Papadimitriou E., Pochareddy S., Ahituv N., Buxbaum J., Coon H., Daly M., Kim Y.S., Marth G., Neale B.M., Quinlan A., Rubenstein J., Sestan N., State M., Willsey A. J., Talkowski M., Devlin B., Roeder K., Sanders S.

Research Highlight

An analytical framework for whole-genome sequence association studies and its implications for autism spectrum disorder. Werling D., Brand H., An J.Y., Stone M.R., Zhu L., Glessner J.T., Collins R.L., Dong S., Layer R.M., Markenscoff-Papadimitriou E., Farrell A., Schwartz G.B., Wang H.Z., Currall B.B., Zhao X., Dea J., Duhn C., Erdman C.A., Gilson M.C., Yadav R., Handsaker R.E., Kashin S., Klei L., Mandell J.D., Nowakowski T., Liu Y., Pochareddy S., Smith L., Walker M.F., Waterman M.J., He X., Kriegstein A., Rubenstein J., Sestan N., McCarroll S., Neale B.M., Coon H., Willsey A. J., Buxbaum J., Daly M., State M., Quinlan A., Marth G., Roeder K., Devlin B., Talkowski M., Sanders S.