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Biology Department

Ferland Lab

The combined long-term objectives of our research are to better understand the molecular, genetic, and cellular mechanisms causing neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders. Overall, my research interests lie primarily in the study of disorders of brain development and neurological disease and involve four central areas of investigation:

1) functional analyses of AHI1, a novel gene which we mapped and cloned in patients with Joubert syndrome (Ferland et al., Nature Genetics, 2004; Doering et al., J. Comp. Neurol., 2008),

2) formation and function of the primary non-motile cilia in development and disease (Hsiao et al., Hum. Mol. Genet., 2009)

3) genetic and neuroanatomical mechanisms of seizure threshold, seizure propagation, and epileptogenesis (Papandrea et al., Exp. Neurol., 2009, Papandrea et al., Epil. Res., 2009, in press; Ferland et al., 1998a,b,c, 1999, 2002a,b, 2003),

4) cell biological analyses of neural stem cells during brain development (Sheen, Ferland et al., 2006a,b; Ferland et al., Hum. Mol. Genet., 2009; Ferland and Guerrini, Neurology, 2009),

5) genetic and phenotypic (neurological) analyses of human pedigrees with inherited neurodevelopmental abnormalities (Ferland et al., Nature Genetics, 2004; Basel-Vanagaite et al., J. Med. Genet., 2006; Ferland et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet, 2006),

6) characterization of mice with targeted deletions of genes involved in brain development (Ahi1) and brain plasticity (Rho-GDI-gamma, Rho-GDI-alpha) using experiments designed to examine behavior, neuroanatomy, and cell biology (Ferland et al., 2003; Ferland et al., Brain Res., 2005; Doering et al., J. Comp. Neurol., 2008).