Maria Chahrour, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

SFARI Investigator Website

Maria Chahrour received her B.S. in biology from the American University of Beirut prior to attending the University of North Texas for an M.S. in forensic genetics. She obtained her Ph.D. in molecular and human genetics from Baylor College of Medicine, where she studied molecular mechanisms underlying Rett syndrome. She joined Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital as a postdoctoral fellow and later as an instructor in the Division of Genetics and Genomics, where she focused on identifying genetic causes of autism spectrum disorder.

Chahrour joined the faculty at the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Genetics and the departments of neuroscience and psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2015. She is interested in identifying genetic causes of autism spectrum disorder and investigating the underlying molecular pathways, with the hope of shedding light on common mechanisms involved in disease etiology.

Funded Projects

Mobile genetic elements in autism spectrum disorder

Awarded: 2019
Award Type: Pilot

SFARI Funded Publications

Using whole-exome sequencing to identify inherited causes of autism. Yu T., Chahrour M., Coulter M.E., Jiralerspong S., Okamura-Ikeda K., Ataman B., Schmitz-Abe K., Harmin D.A., Adli M., Malik A.N., D'Gama A.M., Lim E.T., Sanders S., Mochida G.H., Partlow J.N., Sunu C.M., Felie J.M., Rodriguez J., Nasir R.H., Ware J., Joseph R.M., Hill R.S., Kwan B.Y., Al-Saffar M., Mukaddes N.M., Hashmi A., Balkhy S., Gascon G.G., Hisama F.M., LeClair E., Poduri A., Oner O., Al-Saad S., Al-Awadi S.A., Bastaki L., Ben-Omran T., Teebi A.S., Al-Gazali L., Eapen V., Stevens C.R., Rappaport L., Gabriel S., Markianos K., State M., Greenberg M., Taniguchi H., Braverman N.E., Morrow E., Walsh C.

Whole-exome sequencing and homozygosity analysis implicate depolarization-regulated neuronal genes in autism. Chahrour M., Yu T.W., Lim E.T., Ataman B., Coulter M.E., Hill R.S., Stevens C.R., Schubert C.R., ARRA Autism Sequencing Collaboration, Greenberg M., Gabriel S.B., Walsh C.

Dysfunction in GABA signalling mediates autism-like stereotypies and Rett syndrome phenotypes. Chao H-T., Chen H., Samaco R.C., Xue M., Chahrour M., Yoo J., Neul J.L., Gong S., Lu H-C., Heintz N., Ekker M., Rubenstein J., Noebels J.L., Rosenmund C., Zoghbi H.