LATEST NEWS
Why are human brains so big and slow (to develop)? Illuminating to work with the brilliant Feline Lindhout, Madeline Lancaster, and Katie Pollard on this perspective on specializations in human brain development:
A molecular and cellular perspective on human brain evolution and tempo
Editorial:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02022-3
Primate layer III pyramidal neurons in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex express high levels of calcium-related genes such as CACNA1C and CALB1. Why? In this collaboration with Amy Arnsten and Dibs Datta, we combined snRNA-seq with immuno-EM, physiology and pharmacology to localize key channels on layer III dendritic spines and that both low and high L-type calcium channel activity negatively modulates delay cell firing. Paper here:
doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1112
Very fun collaboration with Ric del Rosario and Steve McCarroll to address a curious quandary: do marmosets swap brain cells with their siblings?
paper out in eLife!
Sibling chimerism among microglia in marmosets
read a nice feature here:
https://oxsci.org/marmosets-swap-brain-cells-with-their-twin/
and perspective here:
Genetic chimerism: marmosets contain multitudes
BRAIN Initiative Cell Census publication package is out!
The suite of 21 papers are born out of the coordinated efforts of the BICCN consortium focuses on documenting cellular diversity of human and nonhuman primate brains.
Coverage of our paper by MIT's McGovern News
Allen Institute coverage of the package
Link to all 21 papers:
https://www.science.org/collections/brain-cell-census
Link to our marmoset cell census paper in Science Advances:
Goodbyes, hellos, and the lab turns 1!
08-09-23
We bid farewell to our beloved inaugural lab member Sunny, who will pursue his MD at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Welcome to PNI rotation student, Yongqi Wang!
And the lab celebrated our first birthday, with tie dye
Fenna receives a 2023 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship!
07-06-23
The Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Awards in Neuroscience supports early career investigators engaged in basic or clinical research that may lead to a better understanding of neurological and psychiatric disorders. The fellowship awards promote high-risk, and potentially high-reward, projects. Aimed at advancing cutting-edge investigations, the awards are presented to highly promising, early career scientists. The Krienen lab's project will focus on reconstructing the developmental basis of cellular innovations in primate brains.
Krienen lab (PNI) & Mallarino lab (Mol) jointly awarded an Eric & Wendy Transformative Technologies Fund
05-05-23
Read about the collaborative project here!
A versatile toolkit for in vivo genome editing in non-traditional mammal species
New lab members!
05-04-23
Siting He, Postdoc
Reilly Nakamoto, Research Specialist
Lakme Caceres, Research Specialist
Oliva Taylor, Undergrad
Ruqaya Kareem, Undergrad
(image credit, Sunny Mudhar/midjourney)
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NEW PREPRINT!
10-19-22
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512442v1
A marmoset brain cell census reveals persistent influence of developmental origin on neurons
KRIENEN LAB JOINS THE BICAN!
10-22
We're thrilled to be part of a new a global collaboration with the Allen Institute to develop comprehensive, single cell atlases of the human and nonhuman primate brain. The collaboration is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative as part of The BRAIN Initiative® Cell Atlas Network, or BICAN, and includes projects led by researchers from 17 other institutions across the US, Europe and Japan.
The Krienen lab will lead efforts to comprehensively map the molecular repertoire of cell types in the marmoset brain, and conduct comparative analysis of homologous cell types in other species including humans. A key aim is to elucidate how brain cell types evolve in mammalian lineages. Understanding the conservation and divergence of cell types across species enables better translation between what we see in animal studies and animal models with the structure and function of the human brain itself.
WELCOME PEDRO!
September 2022
Pedro Estrada joins as the lab's first rotation student. Welcome, Pedro!
SUNNY JOINS THE LAB!
July 1 2022
Founding member Sunny joins the lab as a research specialist! Sunny will help drive forward our collaborative research projects using single cell genomics to map cellular diversity in the CNS.
FENNA RECEIVES SOME AWARDS!
April 2022
Dec 2021 - Harvard Medical School Outstanding Postdoc Award
Feb 2022 - DEI Champion Award (Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School)
FENNA GIVES A TALK AT THE ALLEN INSTITUTE'S OPEN FOR (NEURO)SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM
March 08, 2021
Open for (neuro)science is a great series of virtual seminars hosted by the Allen Institute on new tools or cool applications of tech
BRAIN INITIATIVE CELL CENSUS NETWORK (BICCN) FLAGSHIP PAPERS ARE PUBLISHED IN NATURE!
October 03, 2021
Paper collection:
https://www.nature.com/collections/cicghheddj
Fenna is quoted in Scientific American coverage:
PREVIOUS MEDIA COVERAGE
2013-2017
Ann Gibbons for Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/lab-grown-minibrains-are-revealing-what-makes-humans-special
Stuart Dambrot for Medical Xpress: Express This: Gene-Specific Transcription Linked to Long-Range Connectivity
Courtney Humphries for Harvard Magazine: Was the Human Brain Unleashed?
Carl Zimmer for NYT: In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything