Two-out-of-two for the lab’s posters at this year’s Program in Neuroscience retreat! Colin Robertson got the “Most innovative experimental design” prize for his poster on “In Vivo Prime Editor Introduces Patient Epilepsy Mutation in the Rodent Brain to Recapitulate Seizures” and Andrea Romanowski accepted a crown and scepter for the “Rule a kingdom” prize for her poster on “Multiplexed manipulation of gene dosage of schizophrenia risk genes using Cas9 fusions changes layer position of cortical neurons”. Congrats PouLab grad students!!!
How an mTOR pathway gene causes epilepsy in a pedigree dating from 1727
Congratulations to Philip Iffland and the Peter Crino Lab –with help from PouLab grad student Andrea Romanowski among the collaborator team– for the publication of a massive piece of work just out in Brain, spanning the fields of human genetics, cell biology, genome editing, electrophysiology, and brain development to identify the gene (NPRL3) and mechanisms that cause epilepsy in affected patients.
“NPRL3 loss alters neuronal morphology, mTOR localization, cortical lamination, and seizure threshold” Brain, 2022
Congrats to Ryan and co. for “Cas9 fusions for precision in vivo editing” out on the bioRxiv!
The lab’s first pub is a nifty piece of synth bio for genome editing the brain. Richardson et al. describe a platform to test and develop new high-precision genome editing reagents. Some of our new CRISPR fusions, like eRad18-Cas9-CtIP with linear donors, showed up to 45-times higher accuracy at point-mutation editing compared to vanilla CRISPR. Another step toward direct in vivo knockin and in situ gene therapy approaches!
The Lab goes to Chicago…
(photo by T. Soykan)
The lab has fun recreating Raphael’s “The School of Athens” in Chicago, while presenting at the 2019 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience!
Ryan, Marilyn, and Jeffrey unveiled their new approach to high efficiency in vivo genome engineering with in situ CRISPR:
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/65807
Bek, Andrea, Noury, and Uriel debuted their findings on how a mutation in a family with intellectual disability affects the dynactin complex and cortical circuit wiring:
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/66733
Alex presented new findings on how phosphorylation of Neuroligin adhesion molecules determines synapse specificities:
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/58703
And how reciprocal adhesion gradient matching guides the development of cortical circuitry:
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/63936
… and Garrett stashed us some sweet top-shelf probes…
Congrats Andrea!
The lab does Baltimore Brain Awareness Week
Andrea and Garrett spreading the love for neuroscience at Windsor Hills Elementary and Middle School!
Learn more at UMB NOVA (Neuroscience Outreach and Volunteer Association)
New lab rotation students get the window chalk talk
Do we use the windows as white boards? We sure do.
Today is the first day for Ben Grosso (Program in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology) and Garrett Bunce (Program in Neuroscience) in the lab, kicking off the first round of 2019 lab rotations for GPILS students. Andrea and Marilyn introduce the new lab members to the lab’s science…
Lab’s 1st PhD student down to business!
Andrea Romanowski, from the Program in Molecular Medicine, becomes the lab’s 1st PhD student! Andrea’s first official day of PhD work, July 26, is also the day that, exactly 100 years ago, Emmy Noether published a paper outlining her eponymous theorem. Auspicious beginnings for the future Dr. Romanowski!
Moving Day
Moving day is here! Time for the Poulopoulos Lab to get a new home across the street in Health Sciences Facility III.
Equipment needs bubble wrap, heavy things need lifting, scopes come apart and back together again. And in the midst of this madness, our science doesn’t miss a beat! The heroic investigators of the lab continued cloning and perfusing in between filling crates and hauling off incubators. Everyone working hard… except the guy behind the camera, that is.
Goodbye old lab… hello vista from the 9th floor of the new and improved PouLab!!!