Dr Inês Barroso is leader of the Metabolic Disease Group. She uses genetic and genomic approaches to understand the aetiology of common and rare forms of metabolic disease, as well as host genetics of infection.

Inês is 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.

Inês and her group use genome-wide association approaches to identify loci with a role in obesity and quantitative traits related to type 2 diabetes. They 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. They 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 they are using models, such as classical knockouts and CRISPR / Cas9 engineered mutants, to gain insights into disease mechanism.