Programme Leader and MRC Investigator
Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders

Current work and interests

John is co-leader of the Early Life Aetiology and Mechanisms of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders programme with Professor Ken Ong, and Professor of Molecular Endocrinology at the University of Cambridge.

His research is focused on understanding the biological mechanisms that link patterns of early life growth and reproductive ageing to later life cardio-metabolic health.  This is achieved using human genetics approaches in large-scale population studies, in collaboration with investigators using complementary approaches in animal and cellular models.

Background and experience

Prior to joining the Unit he was a Sir Henry Wellcome fellow, holding positions at the University of Exeter Medical School, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (University of Oxford), Department of Twin Research (Kings College London) and the Center for Statistical Genetics at the University of Michigan. John has co-authored over one hundred publications in peer reviewed journals.

Publications

• Full publication list available on Google scholar.
• MRC Epidemiology Unit publications on Publications Database.

Selected publications

• Ruth … and Perry. Using human genetics to understand the disease impacts of testosterone in men and women. Nature Medicine (2020)
• Thompson DJ … and Perry. Genetic predisposition to mosaic Y chromosome loss in blood. Nature (2019)
• Ganna … Perry JRB, Neale BM, Zietsch BP. Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior. Science (2019)
• Warrington NM… Perry JRB, Evans DM, Freathy RM. Maternal and fetal genetic effects on birth weight and their relevance to cardio-metabolic risk factors. Nature Genetics (2019)
• Horikoshi M… and Perry JRB. Elucidating the genetic architecture of reproductive ageing in the Japanese population. Nature Communications (2018)
• Day … and Perry.  Genomic analyses identify hundreds of variants associated with age at menarche and support a role for puberty timing in cancer risk’. Nature Genetics (2017)
• Wright … and Perry. Genetic variants associated with mosaic Y chromosome loss highlight cell cycle genes and overlap with cancer susceptibility. Nature Genetics (2017)
• Horikoshi … Perry, Evans, McCarthy and Freathy. Genome-wide associations for birth weight and correlation with adult disease. Nature (2016)
• Day … and Perry. Physical and neurobehavioral determinants of reproductive onset and success. Nature Genetics (2016)
• Day … Perry and Murray. Large-scale genomic analyses link reproductive aging to hypothalamic signaling, breast cancer susceptibility and BRCA1-mediated DNA repair. Nature Genetics (2015)
• Day … and Perry. Genetic determinants of puberty timing in men and women: shared genetic aetiology between sexes and with health-related outcomes. Nature Communications (2015)
• Day … and Perry. Causal mechanisms and balancing selection inferred from genetic associations with polycystic ovary syndrome. Nature Communications (2015)
• Lunetta … and Perry.Rare coding variants and X-linked loci associated with age at menarche Nature Communications (2015)
• Perry et al. Parent-of-origin-specific allelic associations among 106 genomic loci for age at menarche. Nature (2014)

Links

Cambridge Metabolic Network