ALOISIA (ALICE) SCHMID
Alice Schmid
email: atschmid@genetics.utah.edu		 Assistant Professor of Human Genetics

The Schmid Lab Home Page
Neurobiology of Disease

B.S., University of Chicago; Ph.D., Emory University; Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois; California Institute of Technology.

RESEARCH:

Drosophila in the study of human disease and in drug screens

Dr. Schmid is interested in modeling human disease in Drosophila, in which the power of invertebrate genetics makes it possible to determine underlying mechanisms of cellular pathology. The most accurate models of human neurodegeneration have been developed in Drosophila because 1) it is possible to generate transgenic organisms with relative ease, 2) genetic redundancy does not typically mask phenotypes and the developing embryonic CNS is extremely well characterized at the cellular level. Introducing human sequences into the invertebrate genome can produce excellent models for amyloidgenic diseases, including ParkinsonÕs Disease, AlzheimerÕs Disease, HuntingtonÕs Disease, Fragile X Syndrome, Spinocerebellar Ataxia I and others. Alternatively, some neurodegenerative diseases result from the loss of gene function and these can also be modeled in Drosophila using mutational analyses. Dr. Schmid is interested in using these and other methods to produce faithful replicas of human neurodegeneration that can be used in the search for therapeutic intervention and to develop an understanding of the mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration.

Selected Publications

Layden, M.J., Odden, J.P., Schmid, A., Garces, A., Thor, S., and Doe, CQ. (submitted) Zfh1, a somatic motor neuron transcription factor, regulates axon exit from the CNS.

Schmid, A., Schindelholz, B., and Zinn, K. (2002) Combinatorial RNAi: a method for evaluating the functions of gene families in Drosophila. TINS, Feb;25(2):71-74.

Sun, Q., Schindelholz, B., Knirr, M., Schmid, A., and Zinn, K. (2001) Complex genetic interactions among four receptor tyrosine phosphatases regulate axon guidance in Drosophila. Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, 17:274-291.

Sun, Q., Bahri, S., Schmid A., Chia, W., and Zinn, K., (2000) Receptor tyrosine phosphatases regulate axon guidance across the midline of the Drosophila embryo. Development, 127(5):801-812.

Zinn, K., and Schmid, A., (1999) Derailed axons get on track. Nature, 402(6761):475-476.

Schmid, A., Chiba, A., and Doe, C. Q. (1999) Clonal analysis of Drosophila embryonic neuroblasts: neural cell types, axon projections and muscle targets. Development 126(21):4654-4689.

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