Patrick Page-McCaw
Assistant Professor
Education and Training
B.S. Haverford College
Ph.D. MIT
Contact
E-mail: pagemp@rpi.edu
Tel: (518) 276-4167
Office: Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, 2135
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Troy, NY 12180
Research Interests
Central nervous system regulation of cardiac output and central nervous system development in zebrafish.
We are interested in understanding how the brain takes sensory information from the environment, integrates this information with past experience and physiological state, and responds with motor behavior appropriately. Past history (learned responses) and current physiological status (for example, being hungry, stressed or ill) affects how environmental stimuli are processed. The presence of a full plate of food elicits a different behavioral response when hungry than when sated or ill. Interestingly, our genes play an essential role in creating and regulating the neural circuits that mediate sensory motor integration. Deficits in sensory-motor integration are implicated in diverse disorders such as schizophrenia and hypertension.
Past experience, physiological state and genetic effects all must be controlled in order to study these processes experimentally. The zebrafish is a uniquely suited model system to study this problem. Zebrafish develop from a fertilized egg to a free living hunter in only 5 days in a Petri dish. This allows us to raise the animals under tightly controlled conditions reducing both the effects of experience and physiological status in the experiment. The zebrafish is also well established as a genetic model system allowing the use of forward and reverse genetic tools as well as genomic tools.
We have identified mutations that affect non-associative learning and study how these mutations affect the startle response. We are particularly interested in the cardiovascular response in these mutants. We have recently shown that in normal fish the cardiac response to startle stimuli is a ‘skipped’ beat (bradycardia) followed by an accelerated heart rate (tachycardia). We have determined that these responses are regulated by the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems as they are in humans. We have also identified mutants that mis-regulate cardiac output in response to startle stimuli.
In order to understand how the neural circuits that mediate sensory-motor integration form, we study the development of the brain in order to understand how the neural circuits that mediate sensory motor integration are formed. We utilize both forward genetic techniques and morpholino anti-sense techniques to dissect the function of genes required for normal brain development.
Selected Publications
MacMillan AM, McCaw PS, Crispino JD, Sharp PA. (1997) SC35-mediated reconstitution of splicing in U2AF-depleted nuclear extract. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 94:133-6
Mellentin JD, Murre C, Donlon TA, McCaw PS, Smith SD, Carroll AJ, McDonald ME, Baltimore D, Cleary ML. (1989) The gene for enhancer binding proteins E12/E47 lies at the t(1;19) breakpoint in acute leukemias. Science 246:379-82
Murre C, McCaw PS, Baltimore D. (1989) A new DNA binding and dimerization motif in immunoglobulin enhancer binding, daughterless, MyoD, and myc proteins. Cell 56:777-83
Murre C, McCaw PS, Vaessin H, Caudy M, Jan LY, Jan YN, Cabrera CV, Buskin JN, Hauschka SD, Lassar AB. (1989) Interactions between heterologous helix-loop-helix proteins generate complexes that bind specifically to a common DNA sequence. Cell 58:537-44
Muto A, Orger MB, Wehman AM, Smear MC, Kay JN, Page-McCaw PS, Gahtan E, Xiao T, Nevin LM, Gosse NJ, Staub W, Finger-Baier K, Baier H. (2005) Forward Genetic Analysis of Visual Behavior in Zebrafish. PLoS Genet 1:e66
Page-McCaw PS, Chung SC, Muto A, Roeser T, Staub W, Finger-Baier KC, Korenbrot JI, Baier H. (2004) Retinal network adaptation to bright light requires tyrosinase. Nat Neurosci 7:1329-36
Page-McCaw PS, Amonlirdviman K, Sharp PA. (1999) PUF60: a novel U2AF65-related splicing activity. RNA 5:1548-60
Query CC, McCaw PS, Sharp PA. (1997) A minimal spliceosomal complex A recognizes the branch site and polypyrimidine tract. Mol Cell Biol 17:2944-53
