Robert Carrillo
University of Chicago, IL·Neuroscience·Early-career
How does each neuron find the right partner, and what happens to the rest of a circuit when one connection fails? Neurons connect at synapses, the junctions where they pass signals to other cells.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
Drosophila
fruit fly
neuromuscular junction
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2027
What they work on
- Test how combinations of Dpr and DIP cell surface proteins tell Drosophila motor neurons which muscles to connect to, using single-cell genetic changes in motor neurons that express six DIPs.
- Create Dpr-DIP binding variants with stronger or weaker attraction to test whether binding on the same cell and across cells together sharpens synaptic partner choice.
- Identify a signaling pathway between neighboring axon branches that controls the size of each nerve-muscle junction (NMJ), using functional and genetic approaches.
- Test whether disrupting one motor neuron causes compensating structural and functional changes in other neurons connected to the same muscle, using genetic manipulations, calcium imaging and electrophysiology.
More about the research
Both questions are studied in a simple system with precise, repeatable wiring: the nerve-muscle connections of the fruit fly Drosophila larva. Here each muscle receives only a few motor neurons, and every synapse can be seen and measured.
Why it matters
Flies have Dpr and DIP proteins, and humans have related proteins called IgLONs. IgLONs help build neural circuits and have been linked to autism, schizophrenia and dyslexia. Learning how these proteins direct precise wiring, and how circuits compensate when one input fails, could lay the groundwork for future clinical approaches to these disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David L. Van Vactor
Harvard University, MA·Neuroscience
Test how miR-219, a conserved microRNA, controls dRalGPS levels at the fly neuromuscular junction, using site-directed mutagenesis of its binding site and tissue-specific analysis in muscle.
Richard Sando
Vanderbilt University, TN·Neuroscience·Early-career
Determine the biological functions and intracellular signaling mechanisms of adhesion G-protein-coupled receptors (aGPCRs), cell-surface proteins that both glue neurons together and trigger signaling, building on the lab's finding that Latrophilins set synaptic wiring specificity in hippocampal CA1.
Osvaldo Delbono
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience
Define how brainstem A5 sympathetic neurons projecting to hindlimb muscles affect motor denervation, neuromuscular junction signaling and muscle mass and strength with aging, using optogenetics and retrograde labeling in living mice.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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