My PhD research was on the biosynthesis of phenazines by micro-organisms. Although much of this work was synthetic chemistry, it aroused my interests in more biological research.

In the department of Medicine, Welsh National School of Medicine, I worked as a protein chemist for 5 years (including 3 months at UCLA School of Medicine under Prof. John Pierce) studying the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor, and in particular by photoaffinity labelling the receptor with radio labelled TSH. I was awarded an MRC travelling fellowship in 1985 which I undertook at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, where I trained in molecular biology. On my

return, I took up a lectureship in Psychological Medicine where I studied psychopharmacology at the molecular level, primarily measuring mRNA levels and other indices in animals following treatment with psychotropic drugs. In 1998 I switched fields to molecular genetics and studied polymorphisms which have an effect on gene transcription. In 2001, this work was expanded to include gene copy number polymorphism.

Sutrala, S.et al. 2008. Gene copy number variation in schizophrenia. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics 147B(5), pp. 606-611. (10.1002/ajmg.b.30645) Buckland, P. R. 2008. Will we ever find the genes for addiction?. Addiction 103(11), pp. 1768-1776. (10.1111/j.1360-0443.2008.02285.x) Sutrala, S.et al. 2007. Gene copy number variation in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research 96(1-3), pp. 93-99. (10.1016/j.schres.2007.07.029) Wolstencroft, E.et al. 2007. Endosomal location of dopamine receptors in neuronal cell cytoplasm. Journal of Molecular Histology 38(4), pp. 333-340. (10.1007/s10735-007-9106-5) Khan, I.et al. 2006. In silico discrimination of single nucleotide polymorphisms and pathological mutations in human gene promoter regions by means of local DNA sequence context and regularity.. In silico Biology 6(1-2), pp. 23-34. Buckland, P. R. 2006. The importance and identification of regulatory polymorphisms and their mechanisms of action. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Molecular Basis of Disease 1762(1), pp. 17-28. (10.1016/j.bbadis.2005.10.004) Norton, N.et al. 2006. Evidence that interaction between neuregulin 1 and its receptor erbB4 increases susceptibility to schizophrenia. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics 141B(1), pp. 96-101. (10.1002/ajmg.b.30236) Buckland, P.et al. 2005. Strong bias in the location of functional promoter polymorphisms. Human Mutation 26(3), pp. 214-223. (10.1002/humu.20207) Bray, N.et al. 2005. Haplotypes at the dystrobrevin binding protein 1 (DTNBP1) gene locus mediate risk for schizophrenia through reduced DTNBP1 expression. Human Molecular Genetics 14(14), pp. 1947-1954. (10.1093/hmg/ddi199) Buckland, P.et al. 2005. Low gene expression conferred by association of an allele of the 5-HT2C receptor gene with antipsychotic-induced weight gain. American Journal of Psychiatry 162(3), pp. 613-615. (10.1176/appi.ajp.162.3.613)