Dr. Maggie Crow, a CSHL postdoctoral researcher in quantitative biology, has been awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for her research at the intersection of genomics, neuroscience, and computer science. Crow, who is affiliated with Associate Professor Jesse Gillis’ lab, will use the grant for her project studying interneurons, which she likens to “the ‘brakes’ of the nervous system.”
This work will be an “ambitious and exciting extension” of her research in Gillis’s lab, Crow said, as well as her collaboration with CSHL neurobiology professor Josh Huang.
“Although all interneurons play a similar role in brain circuits, they are surprisingly diverse, taking many different shapes and sizes. My goal will be to try to measure and to explain this diversity,” Crow said. “Since I’m a computational biologist, I’ll do this by combining data from many experiments to try to find gene expression and gene regulatory patterns that might explain differences between interneuron types.”
Earlier this month, Crow was the lead author on a study, with Gillis, that provided a comprehensive rankings list for the most suspect genes in different diseases. The work could have future applications in research and drug discovery.
Written by: Charlotte Hu, Content Developer/Communicator | publicaffairs@cshl.edu | 516-367-8455