Brain injury in premature infants remains a very significant medical problem even as great strides have been made in helping these infants survive following early birth. We are trying to understand the special vulnerability of the premature brain to a variety of insults. Using tissue culture and whole animals models, our goal is to characterize mechanisms of injury and death in the developing CNS to provide the basis for developing effective prevention and treatment. The student will perform bench research using tissue culture and animal models of neonatal brain injury. The focus is on understanding the mechanisms underlying ischemic injury to oligodendrocytes and white matter in the developing brain at a cellular and molecular level.

We are interested in how glutamate concentration is controlled in and around excitatory synapses. Abnormalities in excitatory transmission have been found to be important in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and drug addiction. Glutamate homeostasis is largely controlled by glutamate transporters, and the most important of these is GLT-1, which is expressed in both neurons and astrocytes, as well as oligodendrocytes. We have made a conditional GLT-1 knockout which we are using to knock out GLT-1 in the different cell types and regions in which it is expressed. Using this approach we are probing the role of GLT-1 expressed in these different locations. The student will perform bench research and in vivo studies to understand how abnormalities in GLT-1 expression in different sites may contribute to drug addiction and to mental illness.

The goal of this project is to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying Huntington's disease. We are using tissue culture and animal models of this disease, and are pursuing the hypothesis that abnormalities in cellular responses to stress are critical in the disease process. The student role will be to conduct basic lab research as part of this project.