Research
Astrocyte development and the roles of astrocytes in diseases
Appointments
- Assistant Professor
- Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior
Biography
Astrocytes constitute at least a third of all cells in human brains. Long thought to be passive support cells, astrocytes are recently found to be critical for the development and function of the central nervous system. Accumulating evidence show that astrocytes are involved in almost every type of neurological and psychiatric disorder.
The cellular and molecular mechanisms that control astrocyte development as well as dysfunction of astrocytes in neurological and psychiatric disorders remains poorly understood.
We combine cell culture and mouse genetic approaches to study the following questions:
- What signals regulate astrocyte maturation?
- How is astrocyte differentiation regulated?
- Can we improve treatment of glioblastoma by studying astrocyte development?
- Are astrocytes involved in intellectual disability and autism?
Publications
- Zhu, W, Zheng, Y, Yu, M, Witman, N, Zhou, L, Wei, J et al.. Prothrombotic Antibodies Targeting the Spike Protein's Receptor-Binding Domain in Severe COVID-19. Blood. 2024; :. doi: 10.1182/blood.2024025010. PubMed PMID:39576992 .
- Hayrapetyan, A, Tumasyan, A, Adam, W, Andrejkovic, JW, Bergauer, T, Chatterjee, S et al.. Search for Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns in Proton-Proton Collisions at 13 TeV. Phys Rev Lett. 2024;133 (19):191902. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.191902. PubMed PMID:39576923 .
- Bo, Z, Chen, W, Chen, X, Chen, Y, Cheng, Z, Cui, X et al.. First Indication of Solar ^{8}B Neutrinos through Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering in PandaX-4T. Phys Rev Lett. 2024;133 (19):191001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.191001. PubMed PMID:39576898 .
- Chen, X, Zhang, Y, Yin, J, Liu, C, Xie, M, Wang, Y et al.. Structural basis for the reaction cycle and transport mechanism of human Na+-sulfate cotransporter NaS1 (SLC13A1). Sci Adv. 2024;10 (47):eado6778. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ado6778. PubMed PMID:39576865 .
- Wang, L, Dai, JY, Ding, KS, Zeng, HX, Cheng, Q, Yang, ZQ et al.. High-order direct modulation terahertz communications with a wideband time-coding metachip modulator. Sci Adv. 2024;10 (47):eadq8693. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adq8693. PubMed PMID:39576862 .