Editing the Brain @ University of Maryland School of Medicine
Following a daunting quest through enchanted forests, poisonous swamps, and Neuroscience monster Bosses, Garrett Crutcher successfully defended his PhD, with his wits and his sword, against Ganon-1, the non-coding hybrid RNA he discovered in his PhD. Having fulfilled this quest, the sun shines a little brighter in the realms of UMSOM Neuroscience…
Calling all Neuroscientists!!!
Come check out all the PouLab posters at SfN 2023
Sunday pm session: “Genetic Techniques to Target and/or Manipulate Cells”, three back-to-back posters :
Monday am session “Animal Models of Epilepsy: Genetics and Pharmacology”:
Wednesday pm session “Mechanisms Underlying Axon Growth and Targeting”:
Celebrate neuroscience with us!!!
Ryan Richardson’s paper describing the development of Cas9-RC, a new CRISPR agent with increased performance for knockin, is out in the October 2023 issue of The CRISPR Journal.
Not only that, but the paper got the cover! Kudos to Cheryl Brandenburg for the beautiful image of knockin neurons and astrocytes using Cas9-RC in the developing mouse brain. Congrats to the whole team for concluding this large piece of Synth Bio meets Dev Neurosci!
We would be delighted to have you try out Cas9-RC for your own knockin needs. Plasmids will become available on Addgene within the next few days!
Corinne Martin was awarded a 2023 national Goldwater Scholarship!!! We couldn’t be prouder of her! Corinne spent two years as an NSIP intern in the lab, critically working on Pegassist and researching the links between brain development and brain cancer. Corinne’s ideas spawned new paths of investigation on how common cellular pathways in development get aberrantly reactivated in tumor cells. With a Goldwater scholarship, we are all excited to see the new frontiers Corinne will take on at the forefront of biomedical research! Congratulations Corinne!!!
https://eng.umd.edu/news/story/two-umd-bioengineering-majors-named-2023-goldwater-scholars
Did you know that an estimated 40% of RNA in the brain is not captured by single-cell RNAseq?
Explore the intriguing world of the Brain’s Dark Transcriptome in our latest review, published in Current Opinion in Neurobiology! Check out the other great reviews in this special issue on Developmental Neuroscience edited by Debby Silver and Franck Polleux!
Follow our science at the 4 PouLab posters at SfN 2022 in San Diego!
Cheryl Brandenburg on Monday morning (Y5):
“Light sheet mapping of parvalbumin subtypes of Purkinje cells using in vivo CRISPR strategies“
Colin Robertson on Monday afternoon (YY36):
“Neural somatic genome editing in the brain for personalized patient models“
Garrett Bunce and Ro Whitten on Wednesday morning (B31):
“The novel gene Ganon-1 produces a scaffolding RNA for growth signaling in developing axon projections“
Andrea Romanowski on Wednesday morning (C45):
“Mosaic Cas9 fusions to investigate cortical wiring by IgLON schizophrenia risk-genes in the rodent brain”
See you all at #SFN2022
Our work on how the synaptic adhesion molecule Neuroligin-3 is targeted to either excitatory or inhibitory synapses based on phosphorylation is now available on the bioRxiv! Congrats to Bekir Altas, Liam Tuffy, Annarita Patrizi and the rest of the team in this international collaboration between the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, and the University of Turin.
Garrett hosts NOVA’s Halal on the Lawn, then gives a talk on the lncRNA he discovered; Andrea does supply runs, then gives a talk on multiplexing schizophrenia risk genes with CRISPR; Elise handles donation logistics, and attends both talks! And at the end of a good day’s work, the lab celebrates Alex’s birthday.
