Neurobiology

Danielle Tomasello is a postdoctoral fellow investigating neurodevelopmental disorders in Whitehead Institute Member Hazel Sive’s lab. Tomasello is a Simons Center for the Social Brain fellow and was previously Whitehead Institute’s Balkin-Markell-Weinberg Fellow. She is also the creator of The Social Scientist, an outreach and networking site for scientists. We sat down with Tomasello to learn a bit more about her and her experiences in the lab.

For the first time, Whitehead Institute scientists have documented a direct link between deletions in two genes—fam57ba and doc2a—in zebrafish and certain brain and body traits, such as seizures, hyperactivity, large head size, and increased fat content. Both genes reside in the 16p11.2 region of the genome, which has been linked to multiple brain and body disorders in humans, including autism spectrum disorder, developmental delays, seizures, and obesity.

Using a novel method, Whitehead Institute researchers have determined how mutations that are not located within genes are identified through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and can contribute to sporadic Parkinson’s disease, the most common form of the condition. The approach could be used to analyze GWAS results for other sporadic diseases with genetic causes, such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and cancer.

Whitehead Institute researchers have created a new mouse-human modeling system that could be used to study neural crest development as well as the modeling of a variety of neural crest related diseases, including such cancers as melanoma and neurofibromatosis.