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Yingxi Lin, who joined the McGovern Institute faculty in September 2008, studies the development of inhibitory circuits within the brain. Like a conventional electrical circuit, the brain uses both positive and negative components to amplify desirable signals while maintaining the overall stability of the system. An outstanding question in neurobiology is how the balance between excitation and inhibition is established and maintained. The underlying molecular mechanisms are not well understood, but inhibitory neurons and their connections, which are readily modified by activity, are likely to play a critical role. Impaired inhibition has been implicated in many brain disorders, including epilepsy, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and autism.
The long term goal of Yingxi Lin's research is to understand the pathways by which electrical activity shapes the development and maintenance of inhibitory circuits. She has recently identified a transcription factor, Npas4, that appears to be a key regulator of inhibitory synapse development. In her laboratory at the McGovern Institute, she will use a combination of molecular genetic and electrophysiological approaches to understand the mechanisms by which Npas4 controls this process, as well as to identify other molecular player important for inhibitory synapses. She also plans to study the development of inhibitory neurons, in particular how the function of these neurons is shaped by electrical activity.
Prior to joining McGovern Institute, Yingxi Lin was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Michael Greenberg at Harvard Medical School. Her undergraduate training at Tsinghua University in Beijing was in physics and engineering, and in 1999 she received her Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University, where she studied the structure of transcriptional activators.
Yingxi Lin is currently seeking a postdoctoral associate to join her lab. Learn more about this position.
Selected Publications:
Lin, Y., Bloodgood, B.L., Hauser, J.L., Lapan, A.D., Koon, A.K., Kim, T.K., Hu, L.S., Malik, A.N. and Greenberg, M.E. Activity-dependent regulation of inhibitory synapse development by Npas4. */Nature /**/455/*, 1198-1204 (2008).
Morrow EM, Yoo SY, Flavell SW, Kim TK, Lin Y, Hill RS, Mukaddes NM, Balkhy S, Gascon G, Hashmi A, Al-Saad S, Ware J, Joseph RM, Greenblatt R, Gleason D, Ertelt JA, Apse KA, Bodell A, Partlow JN, Barry B, Yao H, Markianos K, Ferland RJ, Greenberg ME, Walsh CA. (2008). Identifying autism loci and genes by tracing recent shared ancestry. Science, 321, 218-223.
Paradis, S., Harrar, D.B., Lin, Y., Koon, A.K., Hauser, J.L., Griffith, E.C., Zhu, L., Brass, L.F., Chen, C. & Greenberg, M.E. (2007). An RNAi-based approach identifies molecules required for glutamatergic and GABAergic synapse development. Neuron 53, 217-232.
Lin, Y., Fletcher, C.M., Zhou, J., Allis, C.D. & Wagner, G. (1999). Solution structure of the catalytic domain of GCN5 histone acetyltransferase bound to coenzyme A. Nature 400, 86-89.
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