Located at the Waisman Center of University of Wisconsin-Madison, our laboratory is part of the Department of Neuroscience and Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center.   We strive to adapt, develop, and integrate state-of-art approaches to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying neurogenesis and neuronal development.

Contact Phone: (608) 890-4392; follow us: twitter: @lab_zhao

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News

Carissa and Xinyu were 2 of the 26 invited attendees for the 2023 Banbury meeting on fragile X syndrome. We contributed to the exciting presentations and lively/intense discussions on advancing research and treatment for this autism spectrum disorder.

Congratulations to Paofue, Ezra,  Lily, Riley, Natalie, Sabrina, Sebastian who presented in UW Undergraduate Symposium on April 28.  See a news release by UW that has Ezra. I want to thank their mentors for helping them: Kristy, Soraya, Natasha, Carissa, Yu, Moosa!

Congratulations to our seniors Sabrina, Natalie, Ezra, and Amaya who will graduate this May 13! It is a major milestone! Best wishes for their next steps!

Congratulations to Edward Chang for being awarded a competitive Sophomore Scholarship that supports his summer research!  I congratulate and thank his mentor Zhiyan Xu (CMB graduate student) for his guidance and support for Edward!

We bid farewell to Dr. Minjie Shen and his family on April 8. Minjie will start his independent faculty position in Fudan University (Shanghai, China). We wish him a successful career!

Congratulations to Sabrina Huang for being accepted by Medical School of UW-Madison! Sabrina joined our lab in September 2019 as a freshman and will graduate in May 2023 with BS in Neurobiology. She is currently a Hilldale Undergraduate Research Fellow and Aprison Undergraduate Research Fellow. She is also our Undergraduate Captain. Sabrina’s research mentor is Kristy Guo.

New Publications:

• S. Rosas, K. A. Schoeller%, E. Chang%, H. Mei, M. A. Kats, K. W. Eliceiri, X. Zhao, F. Yesilkoy Metasurface-enhanced mid-infrared spectrochemical imaging of tissues, Advanced Materials (in press) (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05884) 2023 (In this collaborative paper, Keegan Schoeller and Edward Chang in our lab generated mice and optimized brain tissue processing protocol needed for this project.
• Gao Y, Syed M%, and Zhao X. Mechanisms underlying the effect of voluntary running on adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Hippocampus 2023  Mar 9. PMID: 36892196 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.23520
• Chenfeng He, Noah Cohen Kalafut, Soraya O. Sandoval$, Ryan Risgaard$, Carissa L. Sirois, Chen Yang, Saniya Khullar$, Marin Suzuki, Xiang Huang, Qiang Chang, Xinyu Zhao Andre M.M. Sousa, Daifeng Wang^:  Brain and Organoid Manifold Alignment (BOMA) reveals cell-type developmental functional genomics across in-vivo brains and in-vitro organoids. Cell Reports Methods 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100409). (news release) (In this collaborative paper, Soraya and Carissa in our lab generated and analyzed human forebrain organoids to compare with human brains as a validation of BOMA computation method)
• Ludwig AL$, Mayerl SJ$, Gao Y, Banghart M, Bacig C, Fernandez Zepeda MA, Zhao X, Gamm DM. Re-formation of synaptic connectivity in dissociated human stem cell-derived retinal organoid cultures.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jan 10;120(2):e2213418120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2213418120. (In this collaborative paper, Yu Gao in our lab created all the rabies virus for monosynaptic tracing and lentivirus targeting starter cells)