Chloe is a postdoctoral research fellow working in the Psychiatric Epigenetics Group at King's College London. Her main research interest is the role of epigenetic factors in psychiatric disorders, with a particular focus on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). She is currently undertaking a genome-wide investigation of DNA methylation in ASD post-mortem brain tissue (PIs: Professor Dan Geschwind, UCLA; Professor Jonathan Mill, King's College London, Exeter University). She was recently awarded the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) Centenary Early Career Award (£15,000) to investigate dynamic DNA methylation changes in the development of autism using a longitudinal British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) cohort.
After graduating from King's College London (University of London) in 2007 with a BSc in Pharmacology & Molecular Genomics, Chloe was awarded a 1+3 PhD studentship from the MRC. She achieved an MSc pass with distinction in Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry in 2008 and subsequently started her PhD training under the supervision of Dr Jonathan Mill and Professor Avshalom Caspi. During the course of her PhD, She investigated the role of DNA methylation differences in monozygotic and dizygotic twins in relation to psychiatric-related phenotypes including ASD and bullying victimisation. Chloe's other research interest includes the dynamicity of DNA methylation and X-chromosome inactivation during childhood development.
Chloe has extensive experience in cutting-edge methylomic profiling approaches and bioinformatic analyses. She recently performed the first systemic genome-wide scan for DNA methylation changes associated with ASD and related phenotypic traits using discordant MZ twin samples (in press, Molecular Psychiatry). In addition, She has been involved in methodological advances in the field and has recently developed a pre-processing statistical pipeline for the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation 450K microarray.
Wong, C.C., Meaburn, E.L., Ronald, A., Price, T.S., Schalkwyk, L.C., Plomin, R., Mill, J. (in press) Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling of monozygotic twins discordant and Concordant for ASD and related traits. Molecular Psychiatry.
Melas P.A, Wei Y., Wong, C.C.Y., Sjoholm L.K., Aberg E., Mill J., Schalling M., Forsell Y., Lavebratt C. (2013) Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene-environment and epigenetic associations with depression in females, and association of early parental death with hypermethylation of the glucocorticoid receptor. Int J. Neuropsychopharmacology, 1:16, doi:10.1017/S1461145713000102.
Wong, C.C.Y., Pidsley R., Schalkwyk L.C. (2012). The wateRmelon package: Illumina 450 methylation array normalization and metrics. R package version 0.9.9.
Ouellet-Morin, I., Wong, C.C.Y., Danese, A., Pariante, C., Papadopoulos, A., Mill, J., and Arseneault, L. (2012). Increased SERT methylation is associated with bullying victimization and blunted cortisol response to stress in childhood: a longitudinal study of discordant MZ twins. Psychological Medicine, 1:11; doi:10.1017/S0033291712002784.
Zavos, H.M.S., Wong, C.C.Y., Barclay, N.L., Keers, R., Mill, J., Rijsdijk, F.V., Gregory, A.M., Eley, T.C. (2012) Anxiety sensitivity in adolescence and young adulthood: the role of stressful life events, 5HTTLPR and their interaction. Depression and Anxiety. 29, 400-408.
Barclay, N.L., Eley, T.C., Mill, J., Wong, C.C.Y., Zavos, H.M.S., Archer, S.N., and Gregory, A.M. (2011). Anxiety sensitivity in adolescence and young adulthood: the role of stressful life events, 5HTTLPR and their interaction. American Journal of Medical Genetics: Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics. 156, 681-690.
Wong, C.C., Mill, J., and Fernandes, C. (2011). Drugs and addiction: an introduction to epigenetics. Addiction 106, 480-489.
Wong, C.C., Caspi, A., Williams, B., Houts, R., Craig, I.W., and Mill, J. (2011). A longitudinal twin study of skewed X chromosome-inactivation. PLoS One 6, e17873.
Barclay, N.L., Eley, T.C., Mill, J., Wong, C.C., Zavos, H.M., Archer, S.N., and Gregory, A.M. (2011). Sleep quality and diurnal preference in a sample of young adults: associations with 5HTTLPR, PER3, and CLOCK 3111. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet 156B,681-690.
Wong, C.C., Caspi, A., Williams, B., Craig, I.W., Houts, R., Ambler, A., Moffitt, T.E., and Mill, J. (2010). A longitudinal study of epigenetic variation in twins. Epigenetics 5, 516-526.
Thambisetty, M., Simmons, A., Velayudhan, L., Hye, A., Campbell, J., Zhang, Y., Wahlund, L.O., Westman, E., Kinsey, A., Guntert, A., et al. (2010). Association of plasma clusterin concentration with severity, pathology, and progression in Alzheimer disease. Arch Gen Psychiatry 67, 739-748.
Amstadter, A.B., Balachandar, V., Bergen, S.E., Ceulemans, S., Christensen, J.H., Cole, J., Dagdan, E., De Luca, V., Ducci, F., Tee, S.F., et al. (2010). Selected summaries from the XVII World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics, San Diego, California, USA, 4-8 November 2009. Psychiatr Genet 20, 229-268.
Wong, C.C., and Schumann, G. (2008). Review. Genetics of addictions: strategies for addressing heterogeneity and polygenicity of substance use disorders. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 363, 3213-3222.
