Tuesdays, Eccles (EIHG) Auditorium, 4:00-5:00 P.M.

September 15: Michael Levin, Ph.D., Tufts University

Director, Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology "Endogenous bioelectrical controls of embryonic development, regeneration, and cancer" Faculty host: Richard Dorsky, Neurobiology and Anatomy Student host: Rob Duncan

Biosketch: The Levin laboratory resided in the Forsyth Institute in Boston from 2000-2008, and recently formed the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology when they moved to Tufts University in 2008. The Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology seeks a multidisciplinary understanding of large-scale pattern formation and works to apply this knowledge to the field of regenerative medicine.

Michael Levin's lab investigates many of the biological phenomena that members of the University of Utah study, including Left/Right asymmetry, regeneration, and the morphological changes occurring in developing embryos. Dr Levin, however, has brought a unique perspective to these fields by focusing his research on the bioelectric fields that are generated by pH gradients, gap junctions, and ion fluxes within and between tissues, and how these bioelectric fields permit or instruct these complex morphological processes. The Levin laboratory is also interested in studying the non-neural functions of serotonin signaling, particularly in the early generation of Left/Right asymmetry.

October 20: Cori Bargmann, Ph.D., The Rockefeller University

Howard Hughes Medical Institute "50 years of solitude: how genes and environment regulate a circuit for social behavior" Faculty host: Erik Jorgensen, Biology Student host: Randi Rawson

Biosketch: Dr. Cori Bargmann is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Torsten N. Wiesel Professor at the Rockefeller University. She received her PhD at MIT under Bob Weinberg and was a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate Bob Horvitz. Her lab is interested in understanding how the brain is wired to generate behaviors. The lab uses genetic approaches to investigate how the development of neural circuits and the sensation of environmental stimuli come together to produce behaviors in the nematode C. elegans. Her research includes work on olfactory sensation, social and navigational behaviors, learning, neuron outgrowth, and synapse formation.

November 17: Eyal Seidemann, Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin

Department of Psychology and Neurobiology, Center for Perceptual Systems "Neural Population Coding in the Primate Visual Cortex" Faculty host: Bradley Greger, Bioengineering Student host: Shushruth

Biosketch: Dr. Seidemann conducted his graduate studies at Stanford University and obtained his Ph.D in Neuroscience in 1998. He then pursued his postdoctoral work with Amiram Grinvald at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was the first recipient of the Koshland Scholarship. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002 and is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology and a member of the Center for Perceptual Systems. He was also selected as a Sloan Research Fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

A central goal of his research is to understand how spatiotemporal patterns of activity in large populations of coarsely tuned neurons lead to highly specific visual percepts and precise motor responses. To address this question, he employs a novel combination of optical imaging and electrophysiological techniques in awake, behaving primates. These techniques put his lab in the unique position of being able to directly visualize the functional organization and the spatial pattern of population activity in cortical maps in real-time, while subjects perform demanding, well controlled, perceptual, cognitive, or motor tasks.

December 15: Markus Meister, Ph.D., Harvard University

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology "Eyes smarter than scientists believed: Neural computations in the retina" Faculty host: Robert Marc, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Student host: James Anderson

Biosketch: Markus Meister is a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard. His research is focused on understanding the function of neural circuits. A summary of his talk follows in his own words: "Starting with the raw optical image projected on the photoreceptors, the retina performs a great deal of visual processing to compute about a dozen parallel neural images, which are transmitted to various areas of the brain. I will discuss three of these neural computations identified only recently, all related to the processing of image motion. In each case, I hope to demonstrate the overall network function, explain how it is performed in terms of circuits with neurons and synapses, and discuss what purpose it serves in the overall context of vision."

January 19: Michael Ehlers, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University Medical Center

Department of Neurobiology; Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Compartmentalized Signaling and Trafficking for Neuronal Plasticity" Faculty host: Villu Maricq, Biology Student host: Eerik Elias

Biosketch: Michael Ehlers is interested in the mechanisms and organelles underlying protein trafficking and turnover in neuronal dendrites and their relation to neural circuit plasticity. He has demonstrated different methods neurons use to self-regulate electrical activity, adjusting the level of protein receptors in the postsynaptic membrane to strengthen connections with neighboring neurons (a key feature of learning and memory) or dampen them, allowing the neuron to "reset." He showed recently that cell structures called recycling endosomes trigger a prolonged burst in a neuron's electrical activity by causing a surge in so-called AMPA receptors. He also demonstrated that neurons increase their sensitivity by "alternate splicing" of NMDA receptors to generate extra variants. Ehlers plans to use biochemical, optical imaging, and biophysical approaches to probe the internal organization of neurons, including the nanoarchitecture of brain synapses, to reveal fundamental mechanics of brain cell communication.

February 16: Lin Gan, Ph.D., University of Rochester

Departments of Ophthalmology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, and Center for Visual Science "LIM codes in developing mouse inner ear" Faculty host: Monica Vetter, Neurobiology & Anatomy Student host: Wei Chen

Biosketch: Dr. Gan is an associate professor in Department of Ophthalmology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, in University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He received Ph.D. in 1992, in University of Texas. His research is focused on identifying genes required for neuron differentiation and survival, investigating the genetic pathways involved in these processes, and developing therapies for blindness and deafness via gene therapy and stem cell replacement. He is currently investigating the roles of three classes of transcription factors (TFs), the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH), POU-homeodomain (POU-HD), and LIM-domain TFs, in the formation and maintenance of mouse retina and inner ear. Using homologous recombination in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells to mutate these TF genes, his group has shown that these TFs function in a cascade to regulate the differentiation of neuronal progenitor cells into specific types of neurons and to regulate the maturation and survival of post-differentiation neurons.

March 16: Matthew Scott, Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine

Departments of Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Bioengineering; Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Communicating with Hedgehogs: Signaling in Development and Disease" Faculty host: Ed Levine, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Student host: Crystal Sigulinsky

Biosketch: Dr. Matthew Scott is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in the departments of Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Bioengineering at Stanford University. He received his BS in Life Sciences and PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed his postdoctoral work in the laboratories of Thomas Kaufman and Barry Polisky at Indiana University. Early research by Dr. Scott on homeotic and body segmentation genes revealed the seminal discovery of the homeodomain. Current research in Dr. Scott's lab continues to focus on genetic regulation in development and disease, particularly how embryonic and later development is governed by proteins that control gene activity and signaling processes and how defects in the regulators of development, or in related proteins, lead to birth defects, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. Active research in the lab seeks to dissect the Hedgehog signaling pathway and its role in development and cancer. Other interests include Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) syndrome, a neurodegenerative disorder, and neural control of growth.

April 20: Catherina Becker, Ph.D., University of Edinburgh

Division of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences, Centre for Neuroregeneration "Making new motor neurons in the spinal cord of zebrafish" Faculty host: Shannon Odelberg, Internal Medicine Student host: Katherine Zukor

Biosketch: Dr. Catherina Becker is a Senior Lecturer in Neurobiology at the Centre for Neuroregeneration at the University of Edinburgh. She received a PhD in Neurobiology at the University of Bremen and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the University of California in Irvine, and the Centre for Molecular Neurobiology in Hamburg. Her laboratory studies central nervous system (CNS) development and regeneration in zebrafish, a vertebrate that is able to regenerate its CNS after injury. Specifically, her lab focuses on understanding how regenerating axons in the optic nerve navigate to their proper targets after an optic nerve injury and how motor neurons in the spinal cord are regenerated after a spinal cord injury. Work in her lab will undoubtedly give us new insights into how to improve axon and neuron regeneration after CNS injury or during motor neuron disease in humans.

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