Datta Lab

Archives for March 2011

New Paper!

by

Check out our latest paper, published today in the journal Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09868.html

The paper describes efforts to trace neural projections from single glomeruli within the mouse olfactory bulb to their targets in the cortex; our data reveal that different regions of the olfactory cortex receive distinct patterns of projection (ranging from totally diffuse to stereotyped and segregated), suggesting that each region of the olfactory cortex may play a unique role in building odor percepts and facilitating odor-driven behaviors.

This paper represents the collaborative efforts of the Axel and Datta labs, and in particular the work of a spectacular graduate student of Richard’s, Dara Sosulski. Congrats to all!

Spring Is Here….

by

….and with it new blood for the lab! First off, Dan Bear, a current Program in Neuroscience student, is permanently joining the lab as a graduate student. Dan’s work will focus on the molecular biology of the peripheral olfactory system, and in particular the transcriptomics and genomics of different functional classes of olfactory sensory neurons. Tari Tan, also a PIN graduate student, is rotating in the lab and working on a project to use optogenetics to modulate odor-driven behaviors. Tari, who hails from Oregon, comes to us after an impressive undergraduate career where she developed molecular biological tools to probe the neural underpinning of sexual behaviors in sheep. Welcome to them both!
  Tari, both pre- and post-injection. You can’t tell from this picture, but she has KISS 108 blasting in the background.  
Dan Bear, surfing the genome. Apparently, Dan went to Harvard College as an undergraduate, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him.