Sarah Siegrist
University of Virginia, VA·Neuroscience
Nearly all the neurons in an adult brain are made during development by a varied population of neural stem cells. How many neurons get made, and of which kinds, depends on signals inside each stem cell and on cues from outside it, such as how much food an animal eats.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Genetics
Biology
- Topics
neural stem cells
neuroblasts
Drosophila melanogaster
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Identify the intrinsic differences between Drosophila neural stem cells that divide only when nutrients are available and the subset that divides regardless of diet, using genetic approaches and single-cell sequencing.
- Determine whether dietary nutrients eaten during development change the timed series of transcription factors that neural stem cells express, which sets the types and numbers of neurons they produce.
- Map the neural circuitry that signals dietary nutrient availability to Drosophila neural stem cells and controls their switch from quiescence (a resting state) to proliferation.
- Define how nutrient sensing through PI3-kinase, an enzyme that relays growth signals, controls when fly neural stem cells start dividing and when they stop at the end of development.
More about the research
Understanding how these inside and outside signals combine helps explain how a brain gets the right mix of cells to support complex behavior, and what may go wrong in developmental disorders.
Why it matters
Neurodevelopmental disorders such as microcephaly and autism, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, and cancer cause great human suffering and high health care costs. By showing how diet during development controls the stem cells that build the brain, this work could inform translational stem cell research on both normal brain development and disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bryce LaFoya
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Biology·Early-career
Screen neural stem cells in Drosophila and zebrafish for proliferation regulators that become polarized, or concentrated on one side, in the mother cell before asymmetric division, using live imaging of developing brains.
Minoree Kohwi
Columbia University, NY·Genetics
Determine how genome organization in Drosophila neuroblasts is regulated over development by combining genetics with high-throughput profiling of purified, stage-specific neuroblasts.
Robert J Duronio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Genetics
Determine what is required for the coordinated production of replication-dependent histone mRNAs, using biochemical and genetic approaches in Drosophila to test the role of the Histone Locus Body, the nuclear structure that assembles at clustered histone genes.
The school
University of Virginia: 43 labs on PI Pages, $814M a year on research, 413 research doctorates a year.
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