Michael Barresi
Smith College, MA·Biology
How does the front of the brain get built? The forebrain controls many essential functions, including higher thinking, and learning how it forms is central to understanding both brain development and brain evolution.
- Fields
Biology
Neuroscience
- Topics
neural crest cells
cranial neural crest
zebrafish
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Track cranial neural crest cells (CNCCs) as they migrate to and within the zebrafish forebrain during commissure formation, using live light-sheet microscopy.
- Use fate mapping to test whether CNCCs migrate alongside pathfinding commissural axons and enter the telencephalon, the front of the forebrain, where they could contribute to new neurons.
- Test whether Hedgehog-dependent CNCCs are required for normal forebrain patterning and the formation of commissures, the fiber bundles that cross between the brain's two sides.
- Examine how radial glia, scaffold-like support cells of the developing brain, restrict most CNCCs from entering the brain.
More about the research
Neural crest cells are temporary, migrating stem cells that leave the early nervous system. They go on to build nerves outside the brain, pigment cells, glands and much of the facial skeleton. For a long time, they were thought not to contribute to the brain or spinal cord themselves. This project challenges that view.
Why it matters
Showing that neural crest cells directly guide nerve fibers and add neurons in the brain would change basic models of how the vertebrate central nervous system is built and how it evolved. This understanding could eventually inform the study of developmental conditions that involve both the brain and neural crest-derived tissues such as the face, although the grant itself frames the work as basic developmental biology.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kristin Artinger
University of Minnesota, MN·Biology
Identify the RNAs and proteins concentrated in the thin protrusions of migrating neural crest cells, by profiling their transcriptome and proteome, and test whether these molecules are required for directed cell movement.
Lomeli Shull
University of New Mexico, NM·Biology·Early-career
Define how Prdm3 and Prdm16 regulate Wnt/β-catenin signaling, a pathway that steers cell fate, in cartilage cells during zebrafish craniofacial development using molecular, genetic and epigenetic tools.
Suzann Duan
University of California-Irvine, CA·Biology·Early-career
Determine whether MEN1-associated gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors arise from reprogrammed enteric neural crest-derived cells (gut nervous-system precursor cells), using transgenic mice that lack menin in these cells.
The school
Smith College: 4 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research, 5 research doctorates a year.
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