Lisa Mangiamele
Smith College, MA·Neuroscience
How does the nervous system change over evolution so that animals can perform new, complex movements? Some frogs offer a natural experiment for this question.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
- Topics
foot-flagging
frogs
anurans
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Determine whether the roughly doubled number of lumbar spinal interneurons in foot-flagging frogs consists of distinct molecular and anatomical subtypes, using immunohistochemical markers and light sheet microscopy.
- Compare gene activity between lumbar (hind-limb) and brachial (forelimb) spinal cord in foot-flagging frogs and non-flagging relatives using RNA sequencing.
- Identify convergent transcriptional signatures, meaning gene-expression changes shared by frog lineages that evolved foot-flagging independently, to test whether evolution repeats the same neural solutions.
More about the research
They perform "foot-flagging," a dramatic hind-leg waving display used to communicate, and this behavior has evolved on its own several times in unrelated frog groups. Comparing these frogs with close relatives that do not flag can show whether evolution reaches the same behavior through the same changes in the nervous system or through different ones.
Why it matters
This work could show how spinal circuits are rebuilt during evolution to produce new movements, and whether evolution repeatedly uses the same genetic solutions. The basic layout of the spinal cord is highly conserved across vertebrates, including humans. Findings about spinal cell types and their genes could therefore eventually inform research on spinal cord function and movement disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rory Coleman
New York University, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify where pheromone-processing circuits differ among four Drosophila species, linking species-specific mate preferences to neural responses measured by in vivo imaging and high-resolution courtship tracking.
Amy Sater
University of Houston, TX·Biology
Test how retinoic acid, a vitamin A-derived signal that patterns the embryo from head to tail, triggers the start of glial cell formation in the front region of the developing spinal cord of Xenopus laevis embryos.
Carrie Veilleux
Midwestern University-Glendale, AZ·Ecology & Evolution
Link genes to traits in precision touch by comparing the activity of touch-related genes, measured by transcriptome sequencing, with the density and shape of mechanoreceptors (touch-sensing cells) in tissues from 18 mammal species.
The school
Smith College: 4 labs on PI Pages, $7M a year on research, 5 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.