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Sam Kunes, Ph.D.

Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Harvard University
Fairchild Bldg., Rm.329
7 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Telephone: 617 496-3806
Fax: 617-495-8308
Email: kunes@fas.harvard.edu
Predoc: 3 Postdoc: 4 Completed PhD's: 4

 Sam Kunes

The development and functional history of a nervous system is key to understanding how it directs behavior. My laboratory conducts research that falls within the broad confines of this topic, using the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster as the system of choice. Drosophila offers a unique opportunity to conduct investigations at the interface of development and behavior, to examine how behavior is modulated by functional plasticity, and to illuminate the relationship between genetic control and the evolutionary divergence of behavior.

Current research in the laboratory includes a study of how a signaling protein, Hedgehog, is transported along axons of the developing visual system, a means by which the retina controls the number of target neurons for retinal axons in the brain. We study the converse problem of how contact between photoreceptor axons and their targets in the brain influences the final stages of photoreceptor neuronal differentiation, including the development of synapses. Another investigation in the laboratory asks how visual experience is remembered. The aim of this project is to determine where and how such memories are encoded. Another study looks at how a protein involved in synaptic plasticity is synthesized locally in response to environmental inputs that produce a memory. A long-term goal of our work is to identify genetic differences that underlie behavioral changes associated with speciation, and relate these to developmental and functional differences in the nervous system.

 

References:

  • Ashraf SI, McLoon AL, Sclarsic S and Kunes S. (2006) Synaptic protein synthesis associated with memory is regulated by the RISC pathway in Drosophila. Cell 124:191-205.
  • Chu T, Chiu M, Zhang E and Kunes S. (2006) A C-terminal motif targets Hedgehog to axons, coordinating assembly of the Drosophila eye and brain. Dev Cell 10:635-646.
  • Ashraf SI and Kunes S. (2006) A trace of silence: Memory and microRNA at the synapse. Curr Opin Neurobiol 16:535-539.
  • Yang, H and S. Kunes. (2004) Non-vesicular Release of Acetylcholine Is Required for Axon Targeting in the Drosophila Visual System. PNAS. 101:15213-15218.
  • Dearborn, R., and S. Kunes. (2004) An axon scaffold induced by retinal axons directs glia to destinations in the Drosophila optic lobe. Development. 131:2291-303.
  • Dearborn, R., Q. He, Y. Dai and S. Kunes. (2002) Eph receptor tyrosine kinase-mediated formation of a topographic map in the development of the Drosophila visual system. J. Neuroscience 22:1338-49.