Research
What are we studying?
The Moore research lab is a part of the department of neuroscience. Each lab in our department studies varying aspects of the biology of the human brain, whether that means studying neural cells in vitro (in a synthetic environment such as a test tube or a dish) or in living animals such as mice. Our lab focuses on the asymmetric segregation of neural stem cells (or NSC's) and how that relates to aging.
What is asymmetric segregation?
In first year IB Biology my class and I learned that when cells undergo mitosis, the cell's matter is split 50/50 so that the daughter cells are exact clones of the mother. However, this is not entirely the case. There are, in fact, hundreds of cell components (also known as cargoes) that do not distribute evenly into the resultant progeny. Some of these contents include centrioles, mitochondria, and vimentin. Asymmetric segregation, therefore, is the uneven distribution of cargoes during the mitosis of stem cells.
Neurogenesis and Aging
The Moore lab primarily focuses on the asymmetric segregation within NSC's in the hippocampus of the brain. NSC's reproduce with the intent of differentiating and replenishing your neurons so that your brain can continue to grow and make new connections throughout your life. Using the mitochondria as an example, it is hypothesized that when an NSC undergoes mitosis, it will give all of its old mitochondria to the daughter cell. This means that the original cell will only contain new, "clean" mitochondria, and the daughter cell will contain the older mitochondria. Clean NSC's are referred to as mother NSC's and are commonly found in a state of quiescence (dormancy) in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus until replication. Unfortunately, throughout the lifetime of most mammalian species, neural stem cells become unable to asymmetrically segregate properly due to mutations, and clean NSC's become contaminated. This reduction in neurogenesis is hypothesized to contribute to age-related cognitive impairment. The goal of this lab is to discover how we can prevent the aging of neural stem cells and support this theory so that we can cure neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Citations
Moore, D. L., G. A. Pilz, M. J. Arauzo-Bravo, Y. Barral, and S. Jessberger. "A mechanism for the segregation of age in mammalian neural stem cells." Science349.6254 (2015): 1334-338. NCBI. Web. 7/5/17 July 2017.
Bond, Allison M., Guo-Li Ming, and Hongjun Song. "Adult Mammalian Neural Stem Cells and Neurogenesis: Five Decades Later." Cell Stem Cell 17.4 (2015): 385-95. Web.