Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience

The Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, led by Angelike Stathopoulos professor of biology, unites a contingent of Caltech researchers from diverse fields to reveal the brain's anatomy and learn how the nervous system develops, how its cells communicate, and how its processes function and fail. These scholars investigate the influential roles that specific cells and molecules play in perception, behavior, and disease.

Genetic material inside each cell encodes, enables, and controls that cell's individual functions. To study the role of DNA, RNA, and protein molecules, and understand their links to phenomena from cellular to systemic levels, Caltech researchers design experimental methods and invent new instruments and computational approaches.

The Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience has been expanding the brain researcher's toolkit enabling faculty and students across Caltech to use some of the newest and most powerful tools and methods for neuroscience. The center provides access to instruments and techniques that enable scientists to image through thick, intact brain tissue that has been made transparent. This makes possible a level of clarity and precision that cannot be achieved with previous methods that required researchers to thinly slice brain tissue, then reconstruct a three-dimensional picture.

Working with the center, researchers can also engineer viruses that travel through the circulatory system to deliver genes to destinations throughout the brain. These genes can be used for fundamental studies that color-code neurons to reveal brain architecture, for optogenetic techniques that control neurons, and, one day, for new methods to cure disease and augment brain function.

Dr. Priya Kumar Nature Methods Cover, May 2020. The publication "Multiplexed Cre-dependent selection yields systemic AAVs for targeting distinct brain cell types" can be found here: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/100820/ M-CREATE is an in vivo screening strategy for identifying recombinant AAVs with desired tropism. The approach involves both positive and negative selection and yields vectors with diversified cell-type tropism and vectors that can cross the blood–brain barrier in adult mice across strains.

Credit: Nature

Genes for three fluorescent proteins were delivered by viral vectors into cells in the gastrointestinal nervous system. This technology can be used for labeling and imaging cells, as seen here, or to deliver genes that could ameliorate diseases.

The Gradinaru laboratory develops and utilizes viral vectors to deliver desired genes into specific cells through a non-invasive injection into the bloodstream. Here, genes for three fluorescent proteins are delivered by viral vectors into cells in the gastrointestinal nervous system. This technology can be used for labeling and imaging cells, as seen here, or to deliver genes that could ameliorate diseases.

Credit: Gradinaru lab, Caltech

Caltech Neuroscience recruitment booth at 2019 SfN Graduate Fair in Chicago.

Credit: Chen Institute, Caltech

Professor Viviana Gradinaru with Caltech MD/PhD student Acacia Hori in a lab.

Professor Viviana Gradinaru (right) with Caltech MD/PhD student Acacia Hori.

Credit: Vilcek Foundation

Travel Grants

The Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience offers travel grants to Caltech neuroscience graduate students and postdocs. These grants provide opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to attend and present at large conferences, helping to create exposure and better prospects for their future. Further details about the Center's travel grants can be found here.

Student Focused Support

The Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience supports a number of neuroscience student focused activities at Caltech. The Center provides funding to NeuroTechers, a student-driven, interdisciplinary organization centered around all matters neuroscience at Caltech. NeuroTechers host a number of monthly events from Movie Nights, faculty fireside chats, STEM public outreach, brainstorming sessions and other neuroscience centric activities. The Center also provides support to neuroscience student recruitment efforts by sponsoring Caltech's participation in the graduate recruitment fair at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual meeting.

Publications

Cho, Jounhong Ryan; Chen, Xinhong et al (2021) Dorsal Raphe Dopamine Neurons Signal Motivational Salience Dependent on Internal State, Expectation, and Behavioral Context. Journal of Neuroscience; Vol. 41; No. 12;
https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20200728-094010838

Challis, Collin; Hori, Acacia et al. (2020) Gut-seeded α-synuclein fibrils promote gut dysfunction and brain pathology specifically in aged mice Nature Neuroscience; Vol. 23; No. 3; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20191209-154036633

Bedbrook, Claire N.; Yang, Kevin K. et al. (2019) Machine learning-guided channelrhodopsin engineering enables minimally-invasive optogenetics Nature Methods; Vol. 16; No. 11; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20190304-085432637

Chan, Ken Y.; Jang, Min J. et al. (2017) Engineered AAVs for efficient noninvasive gene delivery to the central and peripheral nervous systems Nature Neuroscience; Vol. 20; No. 8; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170626-152125765

Yang, Bin; Treweek, Jennifer B. et al. (2014) Single-Cell Phenotyping within Transparent Intact Tissue through Whole-Body Clearing Cell; Vol. 158; No. 4; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20140801-121634734