The Bahlo lab works on two retinal disorders: Macular Telangiectasia Type 2 (MacTel) and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Using genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) methods for both diseases we discovered the first loci for MacTel in 2017. In recent years we have combined genomic data with metabolomic data as well as analysing and further combining extensive data generated by collaborators from the MacTel consortium. In the past two years the Bahlo lab has started a collaboration to work on a subtype of AMD with poorer prognostic outcome. This will involve using GWAS and related methods to investigate the genetic basis of this AMD subtype.

Prof Melanie Bahlo AM, Division Lead | WEHI Researcher Profile

Q: Genetics of speech disorders

One in five Australian children start school with a speech or language disorder. While some children will grow out of it, many others will go on to have persistent speech difficulties. Such disorders can have a profound effect on an individual’s social and mental wellbeing. Speech disorders are thought to be caused by a combination of genetic, neurological and environmental factors. Understanding more about the genetic causes of speech disorders may improve developments in treatment and help us to identify individuals most at risk of these disorders. In this project, we take several approaches to investigate the genetics underlying speech problems. Through whole exome and whole genome sequencing (WES/WGS) of families, we have identified causal variants responsible for rare forms of familial speech disorders. We are working to assemble an international cohort of people who stutter, with which we shall undertake a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify common genetic variation, influencing risk of stuttering in the general population.

Q: Detecting repeat expansions

Short tandem repeats are short repetitive elements of the genome, which can vary in length between individuals. Some repeats are unstable and can expand in length. Repeat expansions cause a number of neurological disorders, such as Huntington's disease and spinocerebellar ataxias as well as other more common neurological disorders, such as epilepsy and motor neuron disease. Identifying repeat expansions is difficult as their length can greatly exceeds the read lengths of short read sequencing. Standard clinical tests are specialised and expensive and not routinely performed for the majority of patients. The Bahlo lab has developed new methods to identify repeat expansions in whole exome and whole genome sequencing data. We are interested in searching for known or novel repeat expansions associated with a variety of neurological disorders and indeed have discovered novel repeat expansions. Our work has also provided diagnosis for patients where it had previously not been possible to detect repeat expansions, even though they were the cause of their disorders.

Q: Identity by descent methods and applications

Genomic regions that are inherited from a common ancestor are said to be identical by descent (IBD). Identification of such regions has proven useful in human studies with application including discovery of familial relatedness, disease mapping and determining loci under selection. The Bahlo lab has developed multiple implementations of IBD methods including: - IBD methods applicable to the X-chromosome, a special case - IBD methods to mixed samples, such as those seen in microorganisms that recombine and multiply infect humans, for example those that cause malaria. The Bahlo lab has published many applications of IBD methods to refine the genomic location of disease-causing variants.

Q: Genome-wide association study investigations

The Bahlo lab has been involved and also led several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and has previously worked on X chromosome analysis methods, as well as demonstrating that saliva derived DNA achieves high quality data of an equivalent standard to that derived from blood samples. We are continuing to perform GWAS studies in AMD, MacTel and stuttering, combining these basic analyses with techniques such as expression QTL and metabolomic QTL studies making use of modern analysis methods such as Mendelian Randomisation. The lab is also applying these methods to epilepsy through collaborations with the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE) consortium.

Q: Genomics to accelerate precision dementia research

Dementia is a heterogeneous disorder with many different subtypes that are driven by dysregulation of biological pathways. Treatment selection for dementias is based on subtype, but accurate diagnosis in the clinical setting is very challenging early on in the disease when therapies have their greatest potential. Vast improvement in dementia diagnostics is required for truly targeted treatments. We aim to supercharge dementia research by overlaying personalised genomics to WEHI’s current and future multi-disciplinary dementia projects. Conducting whole genome sequencing on patients and analysing the data will help tease apart this heterogenous patient cohort, providing greater understanding of dementia sub-types and facilitate more suitable selection of clinical trials and therapies. It will also reveal if women are genetically pre-disposed to developing dementia. Furthermore, working closely with the experts above and combining their projects’ data with the genomics information will generate an enormous, complex, and critical data set on dementia. This invaluable resource will fast track our biomarker development and diagnostic tests, advance our understanding of the disease to help identify potential targets for therapeutic development, and likely aid prognosis. This four-year project launched with a $1million flagship grant from the Alfred Felton Bequest will involve conducting whole genome sequencing on 500 Victorian patients (recruited via Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Alfred Hospital, and others), then performing comprehensive data analysis on those results, as well as other WEHI dementia projects, to facilitate precision dementia research.

About

Our lab uses statistical methodology to describe and model genetic data, by identifying and making use of structure within the data. This pinpoints genomic regions that may harbor disease-causing mutations, as well as provide insight into disease pathogenesis. We implement these models through software development and bespoke data analyses, primarily in the R programming language.

We work on many disease identification projects concurrently, some of which can be readily solved with existing methods and analytic pipelines. Others may prove more challenging, potentially taking years of development and analysis before a breakthrough is achieved. We seek to identify when and where new technologies can be implemented to achieve breakthroughs in studies that have remained unsolved thus far.

Since 2024 we have become very interested in imaging technologies relevant to neurological and retinal diseases, to understand genetic modulators of these readouts, connecting them back to our diseases of interest. AI has been very important in advancing this work.

Education

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Publications

Selected publications from Prof Melanie Bahlo AM

Grinton BE, Ellis CA, Parnes M, Stripe LL, Munro JE, Mazzola L, McDonnell PP, Baykan B, Taşdemir V, Hull M, Sully K, Cabet S, Lehesjoki A, Bebek N, Bahlo M, Berkovic SF, Lesca G, Oliver KL. SLC7A6OS Founder Mutation: A Rare Cause of Progressive Myoclonus Epilepsy Dated to 1100 Years Ago. Movement Disorders. 2026;:10.1002/mds.70516

Jackson VE, Shin JJ, Horton S, Boyce JO, Eising E, van Reyk O, Parker R, Thompson-Lake DGY, Evans M, Beilby J, Below JE, Boomsma DI, Bridges E, Corfield EC, Franken M-CJ, Gordon SD, Havdahl A, Koenraads SPC, Kraft SJ, Luciano M, Moen G-H, Mountford HS, Musial A, Pennell CE, Polikowsky HG, Pool R, Rebattu VA, Rimfeld K, Scartozzi AC, St Pourcain B, Szilagyi IA, Valand SB, Viljoen KZ, Wang CA, Whitehouse AJO, Wren YE, van Bergen E, Gillespie NA, Vogel AP, Scheffer IE, Hildebrand MS, Sadleir LG, Liegeois F, Reilly S, Fisher SE, Martin NG, Morgan AT, Bahlo M. Unravelling the genetic basis of stuttering: GWAS meta-analysis highlights link with rare speech disorders. 2026;:10.64898/2026.09.15.26363183

Sun Z, Han J, Gerring ZF, Jackson VE, Bhalala OG, Jarola GM, Harding IH, Rezende TJR, Bahlo M. Genetic architecture of MRI-derived cervical spinal cord morphology reveals sensory-motor axis and systemic disease associations. Nature Communications. 2026;:10.1038/s41467-026-77419-x

Razook Z, Mehra S, Naung MT, Gilchrist B, Wijegunasekara S, Utama D, Lautu-Gumal D, Fola AA, Menard D, Kazura J, Laman M, Mueller I, Robinson LJ, Bahlo M, Barry AE. Benchmarking of real-time, field-deployable whole-genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum using Nanopore technology. Microbial Genomics. 2026;12(7):10.1099/mgen.0.001776

Anderson C, Scott L, Leung I, Sallo F, Egan C, Peto T, Consortium TM, Bahlo M, Friedlander M, Tzaridis S, Scheppke L, Bonelli R. Precision Mapping of Retinal Disease: Identification of Differential Progression Trajectories via Imaging Phenomics. iMetaMed. 2026;:10.1002/imm3.70054

Hall JC, Sudhakar KK, Daniszewski M, Senabouth A, Abbott CJ, Liang HH, Kumar H, Lidgerwood GE, Mirzaei M, Ma JY, Atkeson T, Hirokawa Y, Nandrot EF, Barnett A, Cazevieille C, Manes G, Mountford S, Thompson P, Fletcher EL, Wu Z, Bahlo M, Ansell BRE, Paull D, Hewitt AW, Guymer RH, Powell JE, Pébay A. Correction: Patient induced pluripotent stem cells identify specificities of a reticular pseudodrusen phenotype in age-related macular degeneration. Genome Medicine. 2026;18(1):10.1186/s13073-026-01728-5

Wang X, Fearnley LG, Davies KC, Snell P, Lee S, Jackson VE, Read J, Milton M, Harding IH, Delatycki MB, Szmulewicz DJ, Lockhart PJ, Bahlo M, Rafehi H. DNA Repair Pathway Variants Are Enriched in Individuals with Biallelic AAGGG CANVAS and RFC1‐Related Disease. Movement Disorders. 2026;:10.1002/mds.70428

Esmail H, Thienemann F, Sossen B, Mukasa SL, Lakay F, Munro JE, Macpherson L, Warwick JM, Goliath RT, Omar-Davies N, Douglass E, Jackson A, Streicher EM, Heinsohn T, Sheerin D, Barrios MH, Aziz S, Serole KC, Daroowala R, Taliep A, Ahlers P, Malherbe ST, Bowden R, Warren RM, Walzl G, Via LE, Bahlo M, Kik SV, Ruhwald M, Jacobson KR, Horsburgh CR, Salgame P, Alland D, Barry CE, Flynn JL, Ellner JJ, Coussens AK, Wilkinson RJ. PET–CT benchmarked detection and 5-year progression of asymptomatic tuberculosis: a longitudinal, prospective cohort study. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. 2026;14(6):10.1016/s2213-2600(26)00056-1

Rosado J, Han J, Obadia T, Munro J, Traore Z, Schoffer K, Brewster J, Bourke C, Vinetz JM, Taylor AR, White M, Bahlo M, Gamboa D, Mueller I, Ruybal-Pesántez S. Understanding Plasmodium vivax recurrent infections using an amplicon deep sequencing assay, identity-by-descent and model-based classification. iScience. 2026;29(5):10.1016/j.isci.2026.115799

Hall JC, Krishna Sudhakar K, Daniszewski M, Senabouth A, Abbott CJ, Liang HH, Kumar H, Lidgerwood GE, Mirzaei M, Ma JY, Atkeson T, Hirokawa Y, Nandrot EF, Barnett A, Cazevieille C, Manes G, Mountford S, Thompson P, Fletcher EL, Wu Z, Bahlo M, Ansell BRE, Paull D, Hewitt AW, Guymer RH, Powell JE, Pébay A. Patient induced pluripotent stem cells identify specificities of a reticular pseudodrusen phenotype in age-related macular degeneration. Genome Medicine. 2026;18(1):10.1186/s13073-026-01658-2

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Lab research projects

Genetics of speech disorders

Detecting repeat expansions

Retinal disorders

Identity by descent methods and applications

Genome-wide association study investigations

Genomics to accelerate precision dementia research

Student research projects

Discovery and characterisation of repeat expansions in ataxia and complex disease

PhD

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Improving and applying repeat expansion detection methods to identify causes of disease

PhD

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Discovery and characterisation of repeat expansions in ataxia and complex disease

PhD

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Improving and applying repeat expansion detection methods to identify causes of disease

PhD

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View all student research projects

Prof Melanie Bahlo AM

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