Dr. Michael McConnell from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics gave a seminar talk entitled, “Using human induced pluripotent stem cells to study brain somatic mosaicism” on Monday, September 11, 2017.
Research in the McConnell laboratory uses human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to make and study the neural circuits that can be built from different human genomes. In parallel, we develop single-cell approaches to understand the cause and consequence of genetic mosaicism among neurons.
The McConnell Laboratory have three immediate research goals:
1) Determine if genetic mosaicism leads to somatic selection during the development of neural circuits.
2) Understand how genetic mosaicism affects the performance of neural circuits.
3) Discover genes that mediate the propensity for genetic mosaicism.