Seminars

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) impose a global burden, affecting an increasing number of individuals. While some causative genes have been identified, understanding the human-specific mechanisms involved in these disorders remains limited. Traditional gene-driven approaches for modeling brain diseases have failed to capture the diverse and convergent mechanisms at play. Centrosomes and cilia act as intermediaries between environmental and intrinsic signals, regulating cellular behavior. Mutations or dosage variations disrupting their function have been linked to brain formation deficits, highlighting their importance, yet their precise contributions remain largely unknown. Hence, we aim to investigate whether the centrosome/cilia axis is crucial for brain development and serves as a hub for human-specific mechanisms disrupted in NDDs. Towards this direction, we first demonstrated species-specific and cell-type-specific differences in the cilia-genes expression during mouse and human corticogenesis. Then, to dissect their role, we provoked their ectopic overexpression or silencing in the developing mouse cortex or in human brain organoids. Our findings suggest that cilia genes manipulation alters both the numbers and the position of NPCs and neurons in the developing cortex. Interestingly, primary cilium morphology is disrupted, as we find changes in their length, orientation and number that lead to disruption of the apical belt and altered delamination profiles during development. Our results give insight into the role of primary cilia in human cortical development and address fundamental questions regarding the diversity and convergence of gene function in development and disease manifestation. It has the potential to uncover novel pharmacological targets, facilitate personalized medicine, and improve the lives of individuals affected by NDDs through targeted cilia-based therapies.

One of the most prominent features of the human brain is the fabulous size of the cerebral cortex and its intricate folding, both of which emerge during development. Over the last few years, work from my lab has shown that specific cellular and genetic mechanisms play central roles in cortex folding, particularly linked to neural stem and progenitor cells. Key mechanisms include high rates of neurogenesis, high abundance of basal Radial Glia Cells (bRGCs), and neuron migration, all of which are intertwined during development. We have also shown that primary cortical folds follow highly stereotyped patterns, defined by a spatial-temporal protomap of gene expression within germinal layers of the developing cortex. I will present recent findings from my laboratory revealing novel cellular and genetic mechanisms that regulate cortex expansion and folding. We have uncovered the contribution of epigenetic regulation to the establishment of the cortex folding protomap, modulating the expression levels of key transcription factors that control progenitor cell proliferation and cortex folding. At the single cell level, we have identified an unprecedented diversity of cortical progenitor cell classes in the ferret and human embryonic cortex. These are differentially enriched in gyrus versus sulcus regions and establish parallel cell lineages, not observed in mouse. Our findings show that genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in gyrencephalic species diversify cortical progenitor cell types and implement parallel cell linages, driving the expansion of neurogenesis and patterning cerebral cortex folds.

Proper development of the nervous system depends not only on the inherited DNA sequence, but also on proper regulation of gene expression, as controlled in part by epigenetic mechanisms present in the parental gametes. In this presentation an internationally recognized research advocate explains why researchers concerned about the origins of increasingly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should look beyond genetics in probing the origins of dysregulated transcription of brain-related genes. The culprit for a subset of cases, she contends, may lie in the exposure history of the parents, and thus their germ cells. To illustrate how environmentally informed, nongenetic dysfunction may occur, she focuses on the example of parents' histories of exposure to common agents of modern inhalational anesthesia, a highly toxic exposure that in mammalian models has been seen to induce heritable neurodevelopmental abnormality in offspring born of exposed germline.

The Hsieh lab focuses on the mechanisms that promote neural stem cell self-renewal and differentiation in embryonic and adult brain. Using mouse models, video-EEG monitoring, viral techniques, and imaging/electrophysiological approaches, we elucidated many of the key transcriptional/epigenetic regulators of adult neurogenesis and showed aberrant new neuron integration in adult rodent hippocampus contribute to circuit disruption and seizure development. Building on this work, I will present our recent studies describing how GABA-mediated Ca2+ activity regulates the production of aberrant adult-born granule cells. In a new direction of my laboratory, we are using human induced pluripotent stem cells and brain organoid models as approaches to understand brain development and disease. Mutations in one gene, Aristaless-related homeobox (ARX), are of considerable interest since they are known to cause a common spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders including epilepsy, autism, and intellectual disability. We have generated cortical and subpallial organoids from patients with poly-alanine expansion mutations in ARX. To understand the nature of ARX mutations in the organoid system, we are currently performing cellular, molecular, and physiological analyses. I will present these data to gain a comprehensive picture of the effect of ARX mutations in brain development. Since we do not understand how human brain development is affected by ARX mutations that contribute to epilepsy, we believe these studies will allow us to understand the mechanism of pathogenesis of ARX mutations, which has the potential to impact the diagnosis and care of patients.

Claude Desplan is a Silver Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at NYU. He was born in Algeria and was trained at Ecole Normale Supérieure St. Cloud, France. He received his DSc at INSERM in Paris in 1983 and joined Pat O’Farrell at UCSF as a postdoc. There he demonstrated that the homeodomain, a conserved signature of many developmental genes, is a DNA binding motif. Currently, Dr. Desplan works at NYU where he investigates the generation of neural diversity using the Drosophila visual system.

While the diversity of neurons in the adult mammalian brain is staggering, these cells emerge from a seemingly limited set of progenitors during development. This begs the question of how complexity emerges from a finite number of elements during dynamic biological processes. Here, I will discuss recent work from my laboratory addressing relationships between genetic diversity and connectivity in single-cell types, and how progenitor diversity may constrain adult brain cellular states during normal and abnormal brain development.

During brain development, neurons are born in specialized niches and migrate to target regions where they assemble to form the circuits that underlie mammalian behaviour. During their journey, neurons follow cell-intrinsic, genetic programs transmitted by their mother cells but also environmental cues, which together drive their maturation. Here, focusing on the neocortex, I will discuss recent findings from our laboratory in which we untangle and manipulate the programs at play in progenitors and their daughter neurons to better understand the emergence of cellular diversity in the developing brain.

The Cepko lab investigates the mechanisms that direct development of the central nervous system (CNS) of vertebrates, with a focus on the retina. These studies have revealed that the retina has distinct types of progenitor cells that are biased, or committed, to produce distinct types of daughter cells in terminal divisions. The gene regulatory networks that underlie these cell fate choices are being studied by analysis of both gene function and cis-regulatory networks. New methods that enable these studies have been developed, including high throughput enhancer assays and quantitative, inexpensive and sensitive multiplex in situ hybridization methods.