Bahlo Lab

Our group develops and applies state-of-the-art methods to analyse and comprehend complex genetic datasets. These methods are used to discover the genetic causes of human disorders such as epilepsy, ataxia, dementia, motor neuron disease and Parkinson’s disease, speech disorders and retinal disorders.

We are a highly collaborative laboratory, working closely with clinician researchers to reach important outcomes for families with genetic disorders.

Our research is focused on brain (neurological) and retinal disorders, but we have also worked on infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis (TB). Our analysis of data produced by new genomic technologies is identifying genetic causes for diseases that have previously proven intractable to analysis.

We routinely work with multiple, internationally leading, biobanks, such as the UK Biobank and all AllofUs (USA).

These biobanks have >500,000 individuals included and are thus repositories of a vast range of human genetic variation. Additionally, biobanks include data on a huge range of variables including clinical variables, imaging variables, proteomics, metabolomics and so on. See https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/about-our-data/types-of-data/ for details for the UK Biobank.

We have methods and in house expertise to interrogate biobank data for your favourite gene(s)/pathway of interest. Please see us if this is of interest! We have done a bit of work with several labs at WEHI already using biobank data and this has been very fruitful. Examples include: 1) Chiu et al, Cell 2026 (Feltham lab), 2) Bennett et al, Blood 2023 (Pasricha lab). Relevant methods publication (Tool): GeneSetPheno – see Han J, Gerring ZF, Wang L, Bahlo M. GeneSetPheno: a web application for the integration, summary, and visualization of gene and variant-phenotype associations across gene sets. Bioinform Adv. 2025 Apr 17;5(1):vbaf078. doi: 10.1093/bioadv/vbaf078. PubMed ID 40260119.

We are giving the July 22nd 2026 WEHI posgraduate seminar on utility of biobanks for WEHI researchers. Hopefully we’ll see you there or you can catch the recording. 

Detection and understanding of genetic risk factors in complex and monogenic diseases using human cohort data by integrating multi  -omic data.

The Bahlo laboratory has developed innovative methods and software for genetic analysis that have led to major genetic discoveries, including diagnostically critical identification of new genes and genetic pathways implicated in neurological and retinal disorders.

Key discoveries include:
Discovery of new genes for ataxia and epilepsy.
Discovery of the genetic drivers for MacTel, a retinal disorder.
Development of pipelines for the analysis of data to: (i) faciliate understanding of genetic drivers in large datasets, (ii) to improve diagnostics.
Development of novel methods to identify repeat expansions, a type of genetic mutation that causes disease.
Bespoke analyses of complex data sets that outline new avenues for future bench work, often working closely with clinician collaborators.