Dr. Boyle receives a NINDS R01 with Dr. Ryan Mills to study somatic numtogenesis in the human cortex. This project will characterize nuclear mitochondrial DNA insertions, or numts, in the human brain and test how these somatic variants affect gene expression, chromatin structure, and cortical cell function. The award supports new long-read sequencing and computational approaches to define how ongoing mitochondrial DNA integration may contribute to brain aging and disease.