Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research: Opening Remarks

June 12, 2017
Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research: Opening Remarks
Bob Desimone, Director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Bob Millard, Chair of MIT Corporation
Lore Harp McGovern, Co-founder of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang, Founders of the Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research

On June 12, 2017, the McGovern Institute hosted the launch celebration for the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research. The center is made possible by a kick-off commitment of $20 million, made by Lisa Yang and MIT alumnus Hock Tan ’75.

The Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research will support research on the genetic, biological and neural bases of autism spectrum disorders, a developmental disability estimated to affect 1 in 68 individuals in the United States. Tan and Yang hope their initial investment will stimulate additional support and help foster collaborative research efforts to erase the devastating effects of this disorder on individuals, their families and the broader autism community.

Feng Zhang Wins the 2017 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences today announced the 2017 Laureates of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Starting with a pool of 308 nominees – the most promising scientific researchers aged 42 years and younger nominated by America’s top academic and research institutions – a distinguished jury first narrowed their selections to 30 Finalists, and then to three outstanding Laureates, one each from the disciplines of Life Sciences, Chemistry and Physical Sciences & Engineering. Each Laureate will receive $250,000 – the largest unrestricted award of its kind for early career scientists and engineers. This year’s Blavatnik National Laureates are:

Feng Zhang, PhD, Core Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Associate Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, MIT; Robertson Investigator, New York Stem Cell Foundation; James and Patricia Poitras ’63 Professor in Neuroscience, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Dr. Zhang is being recognized for his role in developing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system and demonstrating pioneering uses in mammalian cells, and for his development of revolutionary technologies in neuroscience.

Melanie S. Sanford, PhD, Moses Gomberg Distinguished University Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry, University of Michigan. Dr. Sanford is being celebrated for developing simpler chemical approaches – with less environmental impact – to the synthesis of molecules that have applications ranging from carbon dioxide recycling to drug discovery.

Yi Cui, PhD, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Photon Science and Chemistry, Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Dr. Cui is being honored for his technological innovations in the use of nanomaterials for environmental protection and the development of sustainable energy sources.

“The work of these three brilliant Laureates demonstrates the exceptional science being performed at America’s premiere research institutions and the discoveries that will make the lives of future generations immeasurably better,” said Len Blavatnik, Founder and Chairman of Access Industries, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, and an Academy Board Governor.

“Each of our 2017 National Laureates is shifting paradigms in areas that profoundly affect the way we tackle the health of our population and our planet — improved ways to store energy, “greener” drug and fuel production, and novel tools to correct disease-causing genetic mutations,” said Ellis Rubinstein, President and CEO of the Academy and Chair of the Awards’ Scientific Advisory Council. “Recognition programs like the Blavatnik Awards provide incentives and resources for rising stars, and help them to continue their important work. We look forward to learning where their innovations and future discoveries will take us in the years ahead.”

The annual Blavatnik Awards, established in 2007 by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, recognize exceptional young researchers who will drive the next generation of innovation by answering today’s most complex and intriguing scientific questions.

Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research: Feng Zhang

June 12, 2017
Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research: Launch Celebration
Feng Zhang, McGovern Institute for Brain Research
“Gene Therapy for the Brain”

McGovern Institute 2017 Retreat

On June 5-6, McGovern researchers and staff gathered in Newport, Rhode Island for the annual McGovern Institute retreat. The overnight retreat featured talks, a poster session, a Newport Harbor cruise (for those willing to brave the cool, wet weather) and a dance party. Click the thumbnails below to see other images from the McGovern Institute Retreat.

2017 Sharp Lecture: Larry Abbott

March 20, 2017
Phillip A. Sharp Lecture in Neural Circuits
Sponsored by Biogen Idec

“Unmarring the Perceptron: Lessons in Cerebellar Computing from Fish and Flies”
Larry Abbott, Columbia University

McGovern Institute awards 2017 Scolnick Prize to Catherine Dulac

The McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT announced today that Catherine Dulac of Harvard University is the winner of the 2017 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience. She was awarded the prize for her contributions to the understanding of how pheromones control brain function and behavior and the characterization of neuronal circuits underlying sex-specific behaviors. The Scolnick Prize is awarded annually by the McGovern Institute to recognize outstanding advances in any field of neuroscience.

Dulac is the Higgins Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, where she served as Department Chair from 2007-2013. She is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received her PhD from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, where she studied mechanisms of neural crest development with Nicole le Douarin at the College de France. She moved to the US in 1992 as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Richard Axel at Columbia University, and joined the Harvard faculty in 1996.

Catherine DulacDulac is best known for her discovery of pheromone receptors and downstream brain circuits controlling sex-specific behaviors. Pheromones are volatile chemical signals that play a major role in controlling mammalian behaviors, in particular social and sexual behaviors such as aggression and reproduction. Unlike odorants, which give rise to the perception of smell, and which can be learned and flexibly associated with different stimuli, the responses to pheromones are fixed and stereotypic. Pheromone responses were known to require the vomeronasal organ (VNO), a specialized part of the olfactory epithelium within the nose, but until Dulac’s work, the molecular identity of the receptors and the neuronal circuits that underlie pheromone-evoked responses had been elusive.

In work that began while she was a postdoc, Dulac set out to identify these receptors, developing novel methods for analyzing RNA from individual sensory neurons. This pioneering work not only led her to the discovery of a large family of pheromone receptor genes, but also demonstrated the feasibility of analyzing the transcriptomes of individual neurons, an approach that is now widely used to study the brain’s extraordinary complexity.

Soon after starting her own lab at Harvard, Dulac discovered a second family of pheromone receptors. Both families are distinct from odorant receptors and are expressed in characteristic spatial patterns within the VNO. Dulac went on to study the mechanism of pheromone action, identifying the ion channel TRPC2 as an essential player in the response of VNO neurons to pheromone signaling. By genetically manipulating this signaling pathway in mice, Dulac was able to show that inputs from the VNO are necessary for gender identification and for the sex-specificity of social behaviors, including mating, aggression and parenting. She was also able to trace the connections from the VNO to the brain systems that control these behaviors, and to characterize specific neuronal populations that are necessary and sufficient for specific social behaviors. In one study, for example, she identified a population of neurons within the hypothalamus that induce parenting behaviors while suppressing aggression toward the offspring that would otherwise be triggered in males by signals from the VNO.

In another recent line of work, Dulac has studied genomic imprinting, an epigenetic phenomenon by which certain genes are differentially expressed depending on whether they were inherited from the mother or the father. Dulac’s work has revealed that imprinting of brain genes is much more common than previously realized, with important implications for basic biology and for the epidemiology of brain disorders.
Among her many honors and awards, Dulac is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

The McGovern Institute will award the Scolnick Prize to Dr. Dulac on Monday March 13. At 4:00pm she will deliver a lecture entitled “The Neurobiology of Social Behavior Circuits,” to be followed by a reception, at the McGovern Institute in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, 43 Vassar Street (building 46, room 3002) in Cambridge. The event is free and open to the public.