Glial cells play vital roles in the development and function of the human brain, but we know surprisingly little about how they are generated during development. This includes key questions such as when and where glial cells are made, what their early functions are and how this differs from their functions in the adult brain.
This project will use cutting-edge human cell and tissue culture systems to investigate how glial cells are generated during human cortex development. We aim to uncover the identity of the glial cells generated early in development: their morphology, location, gene expression and function, and how these glial cells interact with the neurons and surrounding tissue, to generate a comprehensive characterisation of glial cells in the developing fetal brain.
It will take advantage of both laboratories’ expertise, combining the Berninger lab’s experience in human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), organoid models and single cell OMICs with the Long lab’s experience in human fetal neocortex development and explant models. We will use a multidisciplinary approach, including live-imaging, transcriptome analysis and spatial transcriptomics, confocal-imaging and cell biology.
The student will investigate:
Year 1: Characterise glial cells in the early fetal brain, establish fetal explant cultures and iPSC/organoid cultures
Year 2: Analyse the transcriptomic identity of the glial cells in human brain development.
Year 3: Identify the function of glial cells in developing human brain in both typical and atypical development.
