Dr Inês Barroso

Former Senior Group Leader

Alumni

This person is a member of Sanger Institute Alumni.

This page is being maintained as a historical record of Inês Barroso’s work at the Institute.

Inês was leader of the Metabolic Disease Group. At the Sanger Institute, she used genetic and genomic approaches to understand the aetiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease, as well as host genetics of infection.

I am interested in understanding the causes and mechanisms underlying common and rare forms of metabolic disease, with a particular focus on type 2 diabetes, obesity, and related quantitative traits, as well as rare syndromes of insulin resistance and early onset childhood obesity.

We use genome-wide association approaches to identify loci with a role in obesity and quantitative traits related to type 2 diabetes. We lead MAGIC (Meta-Analysis of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium) and have been involved in other large consortia efforts, such as GIANT, that aim to increase power by performing meta-analyses across many different studies. We also use re-sequencing approaches to identify rare variants (mutations) that may underlie disease in affected individuals with extreme forms of disease, for example, severe early onset obesity. Lastly, to understand gene function we are using models, such as classical knockouts and CRISPR/Cas9 engineered mutants, to gain insights into disease mechanism.