Dante Bortone and Franck Polleux are the lead authors on the paper titled “KCC2 expression promotes the termination of cortical interneuron migration in a voltage-sensitive calcium-dependent manner” that was published in Neuron. Proper development of cortical microcircuits requires the coordinated transition between neuronal migration and synaptogenesis for both excitatory pyramidal neuronsand inhibitory interneurons. The cellular and molecuar … Read more

Congratulations to Mohanish Deshmukh who recently accepted an invitation to serve on the Editorial Board of Oncogene.  Oncogene is a Nature Publication Group family journal with a focus on molecular and cellular biology of cancers. (http://www.nature.com/onc/index.html)

Eva Anton is the PI of this grant The UNC Neuroscience Center received an Institutional Development Grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to purchase an Olympus Fluoview FV1000-MPE multiphoton microscope for imaging the developing nervous system. Imaging the dynamics of neuronal development and differentiation in real time and in situ, at the systems, cellular, … Read more

In this paper published in the January 15th issue of Neuron, the Anton and Snider labs found that APC, a protein normally thought of as important for certain types of intestinal cancers, is critical for the formation of cerebral cortex. APC is essential to the development and maintenance of the polarized radial glial cell scaffold … Read more

In a paper published in Nature Cell Biology, Allyson Vaughn and Mohanish Deshmukh have identified a strikingly similar mechanisms used by neurons and cancer cells to evade cell death. Neurons and cancer cells are very different by most criteria, yet have the common characteristic of extensively utilizing glucose. Here, we show that glucose metabolism (via … Read more

UNC Neuroscience Center is pleased to announce that the Confocal and Multiphoton Imaging Core has received a major upgrade with the installation of a new Olympus Confocal microscope. The Olympus FV1000 confocal microscope is specifically designed for long-term imaging of living neuronal tissue. It is equipped with a dedicated environmental system from Precision Plastics and … Read more

  A large multi-institutional collaboration, including Dr. William Snider’s laboratory, published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science which identifies a critical component in the development of human syndromes involving craniofacial and cardiac defects. This work began by characterizing patients with craniofacial and cardiac abnormalities akin to those seen in DiGeorge/Velocardiofacial Syndrome. Interestingly, … Read more

Paul Barnes, PhD, a postdoc from Franck Polleux’s lab, accepted a faculty position at Oregon Health & Science University. He is a new Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and a member of the newly formed Neurodevelopmental Research Program in Pediatrics. Paul is also the recipient of the Mentored Research Scientist Development Award, an NIH K01 grant. … Read more

We are pleased to announce that Holden Higginbotham has been selected as this year’s Helen Lyng White Fellow in Neuroscience Research. Holden did his PhD work with Dr. Joseph Gleeson at the University of California San Diego, where he published studies on neuron migration in developing cerebral cortex. At UNC, he will work on radial … Read more

Congratulations to Mark Zylka, Nate Sowa and Bonnie-Taylor Blake for publishing the cover article in the October 9 issue of Neuron (www.neuron.org). In their paper, they found the transmembrane isoform of Prostatic Acid Phosphatase (PAP) plays a critical role in pain mechanisms. PAP is expressed in pain-sensing neurons, encodes the classic histochemical marker known as … Read more