During central nervous system development cortical neurons extend a primary axon and multiple collateral branches to connect to numerous synaptic targets. While many guidance cues and their receptors have well-characterized ...

Huntington's Disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative disease that occurs when an expansion of the polyQ tract of the huntingtin gene expands to greater than ~35 residues. This mutation leads to aggregation ...

Imprinting is a mammalian adaptation that results in the mono-allelic expression of a subset of genes depending on their parental origin. It is believed that DNA methylation marks are responsible for maintaining imprinted ...

MicroRNAs, 22nt long RNAs derived from hairpin transcripts, are important regulators of gene expression and have been shown to participate in regulation of every biological process known to date. Mir-290 through mir-295 ...

Selectins are a small family of adhesion molecules that are critical for immune cell trafficking. In our laboratory, mice lacking all combinations of selectins have been generated. Previous work from our laboratory has ...

Homeostatic forms of plasticity keep the spiking output of neurons within an optimal range in the face of changing activity levels of the surrounding network, but little is known about the underlying molecular mechanisms, ...

Germ cells are the only cell type to undergo meiosis, a specialized cell division process necessary for the formation of haploid gametes. Timing of this process is sex-specific. Ovarian germ cells initiate meiosis during ...

Spermatogenesis is a highly regulated, cyclical process where sperm are constantly produced. Previous work characterizing male rodents maintained on a Vitamin A Deficient diet has demonstrated that retinoic acid (RA) governs ...

The canonical mitotic cell cycle is modified in metazoans to achieve a variety of developmental goals. Among these, meiotic divisions reduce the DNA content of the cell, haploid gametes fuse and reenter mitotic cycling, ...