Florian Engert, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Harvard University BioLabs
16 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Telephone: 617 495-4382
Fax: 617-384-9600
Email: florian@mcb.harvard.edu
Lab website: The Engert Lab
Our lab's interest lies in activity-dependent synaptic plasticity with respect to its relevance for learning and memory as well as the underlying physiological and molecular mechanisms.
On order to bridge the gap from changes in cellular connectivity to behavioral consequences, and furthermore, to get a better grip on the molecular mechanisms involved, we decided to shift our attention from brain slices in rat to the zebrafish. The obvious advantage being that this is one of the most promising models for forward genetic screens, thus connecting mutations on the molecular level with behavioral or morphological defects.
The aim of our work will be to use patch-clamp recordings and 2-photon imaging in in vivo preparations of tadpole and zebrafish as model systems to examine the development and activity dependent plasticity of retinotectal connections.
In order to get beyond the purely correlative evidence and to uncover causal connections between behaviour, synaptic activity and the molecular basis, synaptic and morphological plasticity will be compared to learning-mutants and wild-type zebrafish. Similar to the findings in Drosophila, also in Zebrafish it is to be expected that a significant number of the generated mutants will show defects in their learning behavious. This offers an attractive basis to examine and correlate changes in learning behavior on a molecular, cellular and behavioural level.
Having found learning mutants it is possible to then examine in how far synaptic and morphological plasticity is changed in these mutants compared to the wild-type. Since the same rules seem to apply for the plasticity of retinotectal connections as for the learning-relevant plasticity in mammal-hippocampus, it is reasonable to assume that mutations which influence learning behavior will also be reflected in the plasticity of the retinotectal system.
We hope to establish and investigate an in vivo system in which learning and synaptic plasticity in vertebrates can be tightly correlated on the molecular, morphological and systems level.
For a complete listing of Florian Engert's publications on PubMed, click here.