SCZI Program

FROM GUTS TO BRAINS

Judith Eisen, PhD
University of Oregon

January 6, 2024 | 7:00 -8:00pm PT

Judith Eisen is a Professor of Biology and member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon. She received her PhD from Brandeis University where she explored neural circuit modulation in the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion central pattern generator. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oregon, she helped discover the first individually identified spinal motoneurons in a vertebrate and described their development in living embryos. Since starting her own laboratory, Eisen has investigated mechanisms underlying specification and development of central and peripheral neurons and glia and how these cells establish the circuitry underlying homeostasis and behavior. A current focus of this research is to understand not only the genetic and cellular mechanisms of neurodevelopment, but also how these mechanisms are modulated by host perception of molecules produced by host-resident microbes. This work combines a genetic approach in zebrafish with manipulations of zebrafish-associated microbes to learn how the host nervous system influences the intestinal microbiota and intestinal health, how host-associated microbes modulate brain gene expression, cellular differentiation, neural circuit formation and emergent behavior, and how the host immune system participates in interactions between the nervous system and microbiota.

REGULATING TISSUE REGENERATION

Ken Poss, PhD
Duke University Medical Center

January 9, 2024 | 7:30-8:30pm PT

Ken Poss is a James B. Duke Professor of Regenerative Biology and Head of the Duke Regeneration Center at Duke University.  He received his B.A. in Biology from Carleton College in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Biology from MIT in 1998 for research with Susumu Tonegawa.  Dr. Poss was a postdoctoral fellow with Mark Keating at the University of Utah and Boston Children’s Hospital.  In 2003, he initiated his research program at Duke to investigate zebrafish models of regeneration. Poss discovered heart regeneration in zebrafish, establishing an important natural model of robust cardiac repair, and his lab has identified key mechanisms of tissue regeneration in this animal model over the past 20 years. Recent work from his lab has developed live imaging approaches to regeneration, and has discovered and defined regulatory sequences that control regeneration programs, named tissue regeneration enhancer elements. Poss’ research goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of regeneration, and to use this information to improve the poor regenerative capacity of human tissues like the heart, spinal cord, and limbs.