The evolution and development of spinal cord stem cells and neural cell type diversity

My lab seeks to understand how neural complexity has evolved, in both the central and peripheral nervous systems (please see my web pages for additional details). We use a combination of methods from genomics, developmental biology, molecular biology and evolutionary biology, applied to a variety of experimental species including vertebrate models, lampreys, and early diverging invertebrate chordates such as amphioxus and tunicates. The last two have a much simpler spinal cord and peripheral nervous system, offering insight into the evolution of complex characters in vertebrates.

In this project we plan to investigate the control of cell proliferation in the spinal cord, and how this relates to the evolutionary origin of new spinal cell types. During embryogenesis a stem cell population is established in the ventricular (inner) region of the spinal cord. Under the control of Notch signalling this produces new neurons and glia of many different types over an extensive embryonic and post-embryonic period. The stem cell region is divided into abutting zones, each recognisable by a distinct transcription factor code which determines the range of cell types it can produce. Establishment of these zones is regulated by signalling from the ventral spinal cord, feeding through transcription factors that operate in a dynamic network involving transcriptional regulation and post-transcriptional protein cleavage. The project will dissect this with a combination of experimental developmental biology, comparative transcriptomics, sequencing-based approaches to gene regulation and, possibly, a degree of gene network modelling.