Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Faculty Recruitment in Developmental Neurobiology

描述(由申请人提供)：冷泉港实验室(CSHL)正在寻求支持，招聘一名在神经回路发育和可塑性方面具有知识和专业知识的发育神经生物学家，以显著加强目前了解神经精神障碍如何影响大脑功能的努力。这位科学家将是一个创新的多学科团队的成员，该团队结合遗传学、小鼠模型和神经科学，研究导致精神分裂症、双相情感障碍和自闭症等疾病的潜在生物学。该团队正在CSHL遗传学小组的开创性工作基础上再接再厉，他们为该领域对这些疾病背后的遗传变异的理解做出了重大贡献。随着这个小组继续发现与疾病相关的新变异，包括基因拷贝数变异的新作用，CSHL的另一个小组正在使用染色体工程来模拟小鼠的这些大型基因组复制和缺失。最后，CSHL神经科学家正在使用这些小鼠来确定这些与疾病相关的变体如何影响大脑功能。目前，CSHL的神经科学小组包括突触生理学、神经回路和系统分析以及认知神经科学方面的专业知识。一位对神经回路发育和可塑性特别感兴趣和专业知识的发育神经生物学家将为我们正在建立的团队提供理想的补充，而这一领域的招聘是CSHL的最高优先事项。 公共卫生相关性：通过成功地将一名发育神经生物学家招募到其项目中，CSHL团队将准备将基因发现转化为更好地理解自闭症、精神分裂症和双相情感障碍的生物学基础。反过来，这将有助于进一步发现改进这些复杂和慢性疾病的治疗和诊断。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is seeking support to recruit a developmental neurobiologist with knowledge and expertise in neural circuit development and plasticity to significantly enhance current efforts to understand how neuropsychiatric disorders affect brain function. This scientist will be part of an innovative and multidisciplinary team that combines genetics, mouse models and neuroscience to study the underlying biology contributing to disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism. The team is building on groundbreaking efforts by the genetics group at CSHL who have contributed significantly to the field's understanding of genetic variations underlying these disorders. As this group continues to identify new variants associated with disease, including the emerging role of variations in gene copy number, another group at CSHL is using chromosome engineering to model these large genomic duplications and deletions in the mouse. Finally, CSHL neuroscientists are using these mice to determine how these disease-related variants affect brain function. Currently, the neuroscience group at CSHL includes expertise in synaptic physiology, analysis of neural circuits and systems, and cognitive neuroscience. A developmental neurobiologist, with particular interest and expertise in neural circuit development and plasticity, would provide the ideal complement to the team we are building, and recruitment in this area is the highest priority for CSHL. Public Health Relevance: By successfully recruiting a developmental neurobiologist to its program, the CSHL team will be poised to translate genetic discoveries into a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This, in turn, will facilitate further discoveries for improving the treatment and diagnosis of these complex and chronic conditions.