| Affiliations: | Neuroscience Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Ashley Tucker ashtuck589@tamu.edu Medical Physiology |
| Faculty Mentor: | Jennifer Dulin, Ph.D |
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Meeting Times:
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TBD |
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Team Size:
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6
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| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Students will have the opportunity to develop skills such as: tissue processing, histology, immunohistochemistry, image analysis, science communication, and science writing. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to present findings at local conferences and symposia, and, based on the contribution, earn co-authorship on a peer-reviewed publication
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Team Needs:
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Required: Ability to collaborate and communicate in a fast-paced team setting. Ability to work 10 hours per week in lab. Online training through CITI program/TrainTraq will be required after joining. Preferred: Basic knowledge of biology and neuroscience, and enthusiasm for finding treatments for neurological trauma and neurodegenerative diseases |
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Description:
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Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a traumatic and life-altering event that frequently results in the loss of voluntary motor function after injury. Currently, there are no clinically effective treatments that can improve locomotor function after SCI. Neural progenitor cells (a type of neural stem cell) are a promising potential therapy for SCI, due to their ability to mature into spinal cord neurons and act as a neuronal relays between surviving host neurons that are located rostral and caudal to the injury site. In order to repair locomotor circuitry following a traumatic spinal cord injury using NPCs, it is first critical to determine the number and types of transplanted NPC-derived neurons that establish direct and indirect synaptic connections onto spinal cord motor neurons (MNs) after spinal cord injury and their function in modulating locomotor recovery. This project addresses this question by using state of the art transsynaptic tracing techniques that identify what types of neural progenitor cells are making synaptic connections onto surviving host motor neurons. After identifying subtypes of neural progenitor cells that make synaptic connections onto surviving motor neurons, we will then test to understand the functional roles of these synaptic connections in locomotor recovery. Ultimately, these findings provide an important mechanism that will inform future work on development of cell-based therapies to reproducibly restore locomotor function after spinal cord injury |