Congrats to Bek Altas and other lab members, as well as our collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences and the University of Turin. Our paper on the synaptic localization of Neuroligin-3 in the mouse and human brain and the molecular mechanism that regulates it, became the cover article on this month’s issue of Biological Psychiatry! Congrats to Cheryl Brandenburg for the cover art and the epic experiment that inspired it, one of the first ever immunolabelings of excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the human brain!
Presenting Dr. Andrea Romanowski, PhD!
Andrea Romanowski successfully defends her PhD work on developing CRIPSR tools for gene knockin in the embryonic rodent brain. Her unique combination of expertise in developmental neuroscience and in vivo genome editing got her recruited to the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, where she will do a postdoc in the lab of James Bourne!
Congratulations Andrea!!!
Neuroligin-3 paper out in Biological Psychiatry!
Just out, our paper on the biology of a synaptic adhesion molecule critically implicated in autism, published in Biological Psychiatry!
This massive paper includes outstanding work from scientists and collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Germany, and the University of Turin in Italy. It includes some of the first ever imaging of human synapses (spot the cool cup-shaped presynaptic terminals nestled in the human brainstem ????!), and identifies a molecular mechanism that determines the synaptic localization and transmitter-specificity of Neuroligin-3 between excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the brain. Congrats to everyone involved, a great way to end the year!
Region-Specific Phosphorylation Determines Neuroligin-3 Localization to Excitatory versus Inhibitory Synapses
In utero prime editing of epilepsy variant on bioRxiv!
Modeling an ultra-rare epilepsy variant in wildtype mice with in utero prime editing
For all genome editing fans out there, check out our latest study on bioRxiv showcasing in utero prime editing to model an epilepsy patient with an ultra-rare GRIN variant. To our knowledge, this marks a significant milestone as the first prime editing of neurons in vivo!
Led by Colin Robertson in our lab, alongside Patrick Davis from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, this ambitious project aims to make precision medicine more accessible to a broad patient population. This rapid workflow to generate personalized animal models with prime editing we hope is a step toward enabling individuals with rare genetic epilepsies to test and tailor pharmacotherapy on their personalized models, reducing the burdens of exploring treatments.
A big thank you for the collaborative efforts of the team, including our partner UM-MIND labs of Peter Crino, Phil Iffland, Steffen Wolff, Brian Mathur, and Ivy Dick; as well as our wonderful collaborators from U Pitt, Eldin Jašarević, and UC Anschutz, Tracy Bale! Thank you all for this achievement and the fantastic collaboration we enjoy!
We look forward to this research advancing toward bedside-to-bench applications!
PouLab posters at SfN 2023
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 :
- VV22: Find out what the best tag is for labeling your protein by Knockin at Andrea Romanowski‘s poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892/presentation/39783 - VV23: Learn about how some genes are resistant to CRISPR-activation at Ashley Marquardt‘s poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892/presentation/39785 - VV24: Get to see Neuroligin 3 for the first time in the human brain and how it might be used against brain cancer at Ro Whitten‘s poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892/presentation/39784
Monday am session “Animal Models of Epilepsy: Genetics and Pharmacology”:
- C57: Learn about an exciting new way to model individual epilepsy patients in mice using prime editing from Colin Robertson‘s poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892/presentation/32416
Wednesday pm session “Mechanisms Underlying Axon Growth and Targeting”:
- B14: Hear about a strange non-coding RNA that is involved in axon growth and potentially regeneration at Garrett Crutcher‘s poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892/presentation/33556
Celebrate neuroscience with us!!!
Cas9-RC on the cover of The CRISPR Journal!
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!
PouLab at SfN 2022
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
Phosphorylation of Neuroligin-3
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.
All in a day’s work…
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.
Never heard of “mTOR outposts”? Now you have!
Read all about our postulate of the curious little things called “mTOR outposts” in this Hypothesis & Theory paper just out in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience!
Neuronal mTOR Outposts: Implications for Translation, Signaling, and Plasticity
Happy day for Bek, Andrea, Garrett, and Alex. Appreciations to Helen Bateup and Akira Yoshii for very constructive reviewing; to Gerardo Morfini for editing the Kinase/phosphatase signaling and axonal function in health and disease topic; and to all in the acknowledgements for the fascinating discussions around the concepts in the mTOR outpost model. Be part of those discussions, send us your thoughts!