William S Talbot
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Not all brain cells are neurons. Glia, the non-neuronal cells of the nervous system, do jobs that range from wrapping nerve fibers in the insulating sheath that lets electrical signals travel fast, to patrolling for infection and clearing away dead cells.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
glia
oligodendrocytes
myelin
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Determine how newly identified positive and negative regulators of myelination control the wrapping of nerve fibers by oligodendrocytes during development, neural plasticity and remyelination, using zebrafish genetics and cellular analysis.
- Uncover the molecular basis of the myelination "critical period", the short window after an oligodendrocyte begins myelinating in which it can still extend new myelinating processes.
- Identify genes essential for microglia, the brain's mobile engulfing immune cells, through mutational screens in zebrafish.
- Characterize the functions of newly discovered microglial genes in pathogen defense and clearance of debris such as dying cells and damaged axons, using live in vivo imaging in zebrafish.
More about the research
How these cells are built and what genes they need to work properly is still only partly known, and the same pathways go wrong in neurological disease. This project uses zebrafish — small, transparent, rapidly developing fish whose genetics can be manipulated and whose cells can be watched live inside the intact animal — to find new genes essential for two kinds of glia in the central nervous system.
Why it matters
Myelin loss and microglial dysfunction are features of many neurological disorders, from demyelinating disease to neurodegeneration. By identifying the genes that oligodendrocytes and microglia require, this work could reveal which pathways are disrupted in brain disease and point toward strategies for promoting repair of damaged myelin or correcting faulty debris clearance.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yungki Park
University at Buffalo, NY·Neuroscience
Determine whether Mef2d, a transcription factor that boosts the master regulator Olig2, controls Olig2 expression in oligodendrocyte-lineage cells in vivo.
Dorothy Schafer
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Neuroscience
Determine whether microglia or other macrophages account for the reduced inflammation and improved remyelination seen in mice lacking UNC93B1, the chaperone eTLRs need, in acute and immune-mediated demyelination models.
Michael Granato
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Identify the neuronal populations where three habituation genes act, using transgenic behavioral rescue in zebrafish mutants defective in acoustic startle habituation.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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