| Molecular Controls of Brain Development and developmental disorders | |
| The sophisticated human behaviors, such as language, tool use, self-awareness, require an extraordinary diversity of the neuronal population in the human brain. Such complexity results from neural stem/progenitor cells (NPCs) in the embryo with the ability to generate every cell type in the brain. The fundamental question in neurobiology is how NPCs self-renew and give rise to enormously diverse neuronal cell-types, which interconnect with amazing specificity to form functional neural circuits. Recently, the functional relevance of disturbed neurogenesis to the pathophysiology of neurological disorders has just emerged. Emerging evidence hints that certain abnormal modifications in neurodevelopment may contribute to the etiology of psychiatric disorders. The ultimate goal of our lab is to help develop better therapies and cures for mental illnesses. To achieve this, our lab will focus on understanding the mechanisms that leads to abnormal behaviors. In particular, we will utilize cross-disciplinary techniques to overcome challenges that others have not been able to. The research of our lab will focus on the mechanisms that regulate neurogenesis using mouse models. In the short term, we would like to focus our research program in determining how abnormal neural progenitor cell (NPC) proliferation and differentiation may lead to mental illnesses. Our long-term plan is to use the reagents, experimental systems, mouse models that we develop to further screen novel drugs that can reverse the behavior phenotype in our mouse model and eventually benefit patients with developmental disorders.
2. Genetic mouse models for neurodevelopmental disorders
3. Wnt signaling in brain development and neurological diseases
4. Function of an exon junction complex factor, RBM8A, in brain development, aging, oncogenesis and TAR syndrome
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