Rastegar Lab

How are the many different types of neurons in our nervous system generated, and how can they be replaced after damage? My laboratory addresses these questions in zebrafish. We use the embryonic spinal cord to study how neurons are generated and acquire their identity, and the adult telencephalon to study how neural stem cells switch between quiescence and activation during constitutive and regenerative neurogenesis. We focus on transcriptional regulation, in particular the cis-regulatory elements that control gene expression in these processes, using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, transgenic reporter lines, single-cell transcriptomics and genomics. Because over 70% of human genes have a zebrafish orthologue and zebrafish regenerate neural tissue efficiently, they are also well suited for in vivo screening of compounds that modulate signalling pathways involved in regeneration.