The spinal cord contains billions of neurons, with a huge diversity of subtypes enabling sensory, proprioceptive, and motor function. However, current human stem cell-based in vitro models and prospective cell transplantation therapies fail to reflect the significant regional specificity of spinal cells.
Month: July 2021
Innovative UW Undiagnosed Genetic Disease Clinic seeks to identify rare genetic conditions
The UW Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health recently opened its first patient clinic, the UW Undiagnosed Genetic Disease Clinic at the Waisman Center.
Xinyu Zhao, PhD – Slide of the Week
Voluntary running enhances adult hippocampal neurogenesis, with consequences for hippocampal-dependent learning ability and mood regulation. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we show that voluntary running induces unique and dynamic gene expression changes specifically within the adult-born hippocampal neurons, with significant impact on genes involved in neuronal maturation and human diseases. We identify the regulator of G protein signaling 6 (RGS6) as a key factor that mediates running impact on adult-born neurons.
Donna Werling, PhD – Slide of the Week
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is consistently diagnosed 3 to 5 times more frequently in males than females, a dramatically sex-biased prevalence that suggests the involvement of sex-differential biological factors in modulating risk. The genomic scale of transcriptomic analyses of human brain tissue can provide an unbiased approach for identifying genes and associated functional processes at the intersection of sex-differential and ASD-impacted neurobiology.
A new computational pipeline connects disease and discovery at the cellular level
Could Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia be biologically connected?