Students Profiles
Research Interests:Throughout neurodevelopment, multipotent neural stem cells give rise to progeny of a more restricted differential fate, exemplified by pluripotent stem cells and unipotent progenitor cells. My fetal in vitro studies will examine the contributions of genetic and/or extrinsic environmental cues in the fates of pluripotent neural stem cells derived from fetal forebrain. To parse out the intertwined influences of intrinsic and extrinsic factors acting on neural stem cell development, neural stem cell transplantations are carried out in both spatial (homo/heterotopic) and temporal (homo/heterochronic) domains. In addition, these transplant models are used to assess the effect of a previously damaged environment (via ethanol exposure) on neural stem cell proliferative and differential fate, thus determining the interactions of intrinsic and extrinsic cues on neural stem cell development in a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) model of cortical injury. |
Yung Lyou
"In addition to my primary investigator, I've had several other mentors," said Yung Lyou, who studies genetic eye disorders. "By collaborating with Frank Middleton, PhD, our Microarray core facility director, I've been able to run screens on thousands of genes at one time. That's interdisciplinary. I was also able to take a two-week course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, so that I could learn other techniques to help me in my research here." |
