Berghia
The use of Berghia in the lab began as an undergraduate project by Amirah Hurst at Georgia State University in 2015. Since then the Katz lab has focused on studying the nervous system and behavior of Berghia.
Berghia has unique attributes facilitating neuroethological studies. First, it can be reared in the lab and has a 2-month generation time enabling developmental studies and potentially the establishment of transgenic lines. Second, the adult central ring ganglia have fewer than 10,000 neurons, many of which are large and accessible to direct manipulation and recording. Third, we know from other nudibranchs that behaviors are controlled by a small number of interneurons, allowing us to understand behavior at the cellular level.
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We first received funding to start a multi-investor team to study Berghia from two NIH BRAIN awards (U01-NS108637 and U01NS123972-01 ) in collaboration with Jeff Lichtman (Harvard University), William Frost (Rosalind Franklin University), Deirdre Lyons (University of California San Diego) and Vincent Lyzinski (University of Maryland).