Brandeis has a long and rich history of neurogenetics in invertebrate model organisms, but only in the lasttwo years, have we begun to begin to take full advantage of existing transgenic mouse strains anddevelop new ones ourselves. Prior mammalian work in the Nelson, Turrigiano, Birren and Lismanlaboratories has been primarily conducted in rats. Thanks to establishment of the Mouse/Virus Core facilitypowerful new knockout and transgenic approaches in mice are now part of the research program in eachof these laboratories, and these state-of-the-art approaches have engendered new collaborations betweenBrandeis faculty. For example, Birren and Sengupta are studying signaling associated with thetranscription factor Arx in worms and mice, and they have begun work on a conditional knockout of Arx inmice. The Nelson lab has generated new transgenic lines which allow labeling and manipulation ofspecific forebrain cell types. The first characterized line labels layer 4 star-pyramid neurons in primarysensory cortices. It will enhance a collaborative project with Turrigiano on the molecular basis of changingforms of synaptic plasticity in layer 4 of visual cortex. The new mice have been made using lentiviraltransgenesis and reflect the facilities newly developed capability to creat and harvest lentiviral vectors forbrain transfection and transgenesis. In order to optimize delivery of lentivirus to delicate tissues weproposed to purchase a Burliegh Piezo Impact Drill system. Newer additions to the Brandeis faculty willalso make use of the facility. Katz is adapting his rat multielectrode recording techniques to mice and willcollaborate in multiple projects with Birren, Nelson and Turrigiano on in vivo analyses of transgenic mousemodels. Paradis will join the faculty in January 2008; she will use the facility to make knockout miceimportant for analyzing molecules that are critical regulators of glutamatergic and GABAergic synapsedevelopment in the mammalian CNS. These include class 4 Semaphorins, which she identified in a largescaleRNAi screen 1.Continued support of the facility would permit these investigators to obtain sufficient preliminary results toseek additional NINDS funding.
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