Transcriptional Regulation by Neuronal Activity

Ramendra N Saha, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of California (UC) Merced where he is also the co-director of the UC Merced Center for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience. Ramen did his post-doctoral training with Serena Dudek at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, United States National Institutes of Health where he studied molecular mechanisms of activity-induced neuronal immediate early gene transcription. Now, his laboratory at UC Merced continues to study signaling and epigenetic mechanisms of excitation-transcription coupling. Ramen serves on the editorial board of Environmental Epigenetics. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5494-2584

Serena M. Dudek, Ph.D., is a Senior Investigator and the Deputy Chief of the Neurobiology Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, United States National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating synaptic plasticity in the developing nervous system to better understand how environmental factors shape the adult brain. Dr Dudek is best known for her early work on long-term synaptic depression (LTD) and pruning, regulation of neuronal gene transcription by action potentials, and synaptic plasticity in hippocampal area CA2. She serves on the editorial boards of Hippocampus and the Journal of Neuroscience. In addition, she is the recipient of the 2009 A.E. Bennett Research Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4094-8368

Section 1: Activity-regulated Transcription: Getting to the Nucleus.- Fos/AP-1 as an exemplar for the study of neuronal activity-dependent gene regulation.- Calcium signaling to the nucleus.- Protein transport from synapse-to-nucleus and the regulation of gene expression.- Gene regulation by nuclear calcium and its antagonism by NMDAR/TRPM4 signaling.- Chemoelectric signaling, protein translocation and neuronal transcription.- Section 2: Activity-regulated Transcription: Epigenetic Regulation.- Histone variants in neuronal transcription and behavioral regulation.- Genome and epigenome engineering approaches to studying neuronal activity-dependent transcriptional enhancers.- Higher-order genome organization in the control of neuronal identity and neural circuit plasticity.- Chromatin remodelers in neuronal gene transcription.- Section 3: Activity-regulated Transcription: Role in Nervous System Function.- Nature and nurture converge in the nucleus to regulate activity-dependent neuronal development.- Roles for the MEF2 transcription factors in synapse and circuit development and plasticity.- Activity-related transcription: role in addiction.- Epigenetic priming of activity-dependent transcription in drug addiction.- Molecular intersection of activity-dependent gene expression and behavior: the transcriptomic signature of long-term memory consolidation.- Perturbations to stimulus-dependent gene activity patterns in neurodegenerative disorders.- Section 4: New Tools to Study and Use Activity-regulated Transcription.- Genome editing technologies for investigation of activity dependent transcription.- Imaging activity dependent gene expression in neurons: RNA tagging technologies.- Optogenetic approaches to study IEG activation.- New Genome-wide Technologies to Study Activity-regulated Transcription.