James B. Potash, M.D., M.P.H. Associate Professor Director, Mood Disorders Research Programs Main Office Address Meyer 4-119 The Johns Hopkins Hospital 600 North Wolfe Street Baltimore, MD 21287-7419 Phone: 410-955-2572 Fax: 410-502-0065 E-mail: jpotash@jhmi.edu Administrative Assistant Kelly Weggel Phone: 410-955-5514 Email: kweggel1@jhmi.edu

Education and Government Service

Professional Interests

My focus is on mood disorders. I see patients with depression and with bipolar disorder in several settings, including a mood disorders consultation clinic and an inpatient mood disorders unit. My research centers on the genetics of mood disorders. I am particularly interested in the psychotic forms of depression and bipolar disorder, and in the hypothesis that genes predisposing to these forms of illness may also predispose to schizophrenia. Our lab is also studying the genetics of recurrent early-onset depression in the context of a multi-site study. The third research area we are focused on involves the possible role of epigenetics in mood disorder susceptibility. This work is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Andrew P. Feinberg in the department of medicine.

Click here for Mood Program Genetics Research
Click here for Bioformoodics: Tools for Gene Discovery in Mood Disorders
Click here for The Epigenetics Center

Click here and here for Hopkins Brain Wise Newsletter articles about Dr. Potash's work

Selected Publications

Potash JB, Willour VL, Chiu Y-F, Simpson SG, MacKinnon DF, Pearlson GD, DePaulo Jr JR, and McInnis MG. The familial aggregation of psychotic symptoms in bipolar disorder. Am J Psychiatry  158:1258-64, 2001 

Potash JB, Zandi PP, Willour VL, Lan TH, Avramopoulos D, Huo  Y, Shugart YY, MacKinnon DF, Simpson  SG, McMahon FJ, DePaulo Jr JR, and McInnis MG. Suggestive evidence of linkage to 13q31 and 22q12 in families with psychotic bipolar disorder.  Am J Psychiatry 160:680-686, 2003

Willour VL, Zandi PP, Badner JA, Steele J, Miao K, Lopez V, MacKinnon DF, Mondimore FM, Schweizer B, McInnis MG, the Bipolar Disorder Phenome Group, DePaulo JR, Gershon ES, McMahon FJ, and Potash JB. Attempted suicide in bipolar disorder pedigrees: evidence for linkage to 2p12. Biol Psychiatry 2007; 61(5):725-7.

Grover D, Woodfield AS, Verma R, Zandi PP, Levinson DF, and Potash JB. QuickSNP: an automated web server for selection of tagSNPs. Nucleic Acids Research 2007;35(Web Server issue):W115-20..

Ladd-Acosta C, Pevsner J, Sabunciyan S, Yolken RH, Dinkins T, Callinan PA, Fan JB, Potash JB^*, and Feinberg AP. DNA methylation signatures within the human brain. Am J Hum Genet (in press)  ^*corresponding author