Luis de la Torre-Ubieta
University of California-Los Angeles
Profile
About the Speaker: Dr. Luis de la Torre-Ubieta earned a doctorate degree in Neurobiology from Harvard University and completed post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School and UCLA before joining the Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the Semel Institute Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) at UCLA. His laboratory uses multidisciplinary approaches to study the gene and isoform expression patterns, gene regulatory mechanisms, and histogenetic processes of the developing human brain, with emphasis in the neocortex.
He has led studies discovering the role of transcription factors in neuronal morphogenesis, evaluating and developing improved human neural stem cell models, mapping and validating gene regulatory elements governing human cortical neurogenesis, and generating one of the first catalogues of single-cell RNAseq in the developing human neocortex. Recently, he expanded on this work using long-read sequencing technology to characterize patterns of isoform expression in vivo during this period, uncovering the substantial role of isoform diversification in cell type identity and underlying neurodevelopmental disorders. His long-term goal is to translate insights from these foundational studies to develop therapeutic approaches for neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders.
For Further Information, Contact: Clark Kellogg at kellogg@waisman.wisc.edu
The seminar series is funded by the John D. Wiley Conference Center Fund, the Friends of the Waisman Center and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant P50HD105353.
