Neuronal synapse regulation in health and disease

Research opportunity for a postdoctoral clinical fellow in Michael Devine’s lab.

The project

We are interested in understanding how mitochondria can move to neuronal synapses to govern their activity, how they interact with other organelles (such as endoplasmic reticulum) in order to achieve this, and how this regulatory activity is altered in disease.

A current focus of the lab is to understand these mechanisms in the context of Parkinson's disease, but establishing how mitochondria regulate synapses is likely to be relevant to a wide range of pathological processes, including those featuring a mismatch between energy demand and supply (such as stroke) or circuit dysfunction (incuding epilepsy and psychiatric disorders). My own clinical background is neurology, but the interests of the lab would also be applicable to someone with a background in psychiatry or neuropathology, and I would welcome enquiries from anyone with laboratory experience.

Techniques include primary neuronal and slice culture, iPSC culture and neuronal differentiation, live synaptic imaging, 3D electron and superresolution microscopy, microfluidics, genomic and transcriptomic analysis, and mitochondrial nanobiopsy.