Heads of Laboratories
Torsten N. Wiesel Professor; Investigator, HHMI
Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior
cori@rockefeller.edu
Environment, experience and the biology of the brain interact to shape an animal’s behavior. Caenorhabditis elegans, a worm with just 302 neurons, shows an unexpected sophistication in its behaviors, making it an ideal subject in which to study these interactions. Dr. Bargmann’s laboratory investigates how the worm’s neural circuits develop, identifies the genes and neural pathways for its actions and asks how sensory inputs regulate those circuits.
An animal uses stable neural circuits to generate flexible behavioral responses to its environment. The Bargmann lab is studying the relationships between genes, the nervous system and behaviors in the nematode C. elegans. C. elegans has a very simple nervous system that consists of just 302 neurons with reproducible functions, morphologies and synaptic connections. Despite this simplicity, many of the genes and signaling mechanisms used in the nematode nervous system are similar to those of mammals. The ability to manipulate the activity of individual genes and neurons in C. elegans makes it possible to determine how neural circuits develop and function.
C. elegans’s most complex behaviors occur in response to smell, and these are at the heart of the Bargmann lab’s research. The tiny worm can sense hundreds of different odors, discriminate among them and generate reactions that are appropriate to the odor cue. Since its nervous system is so simple, it’s possible for researchers to determine how individual neurons contribute to these behaviors. In C. elegans, as in other animals, odors are detected by G protein coupled odorant receptors on specialized sensory neurons. The odors that activate one sensory neuron regulate a common behavioral output such as attraction or avoidance. By combining behavioral studies, genetic studies and the neuroanatomical map of the C. elegans brain, the lab has been able to define complete pathways from sensory inputs to motor outputs.
Dr. Bargmann is also investigating how much flexibility is present in a simple nervous system. Recent research from her lab has shown that C. elegans is capable of learning the odors of different bacteria and avoiding those that previously made them ill. These learned olfactory behaviors are associated with neurochemical changes that lead to rapid behavioral remodeling. One of those neurochemical changes affects serotonin, a modulator that serves as a learning cue in many different animals. Another interest of the Bargmann laboratory is how genetic variation between individuals can cause them to behave differently from one another. In C. elegans, a single gene determines whether animals prefer to eat alone or in social groups. This gene encodes a neuropeptide receptor, a modulator that integrates multiple sensory inputs to generate coordinated behaviors. A current focus of the research is investigating how modulatory systems, like this neuropeptide receptor, affect the flow of information between neurons. To address this question, lab members use genetically encoded calcium indicators and microfluidic recording chambers to observe the activity of neurons in live animals.
CAREER
Dr. Bargmann received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in 1987 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked under Robert A. Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She pursued a postdoctoral fellowship with H. Robert Horvitz, also at MIT, until 1991, when she accepted a faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco. She remained there until 2004, when she joined Rockefeller as the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor. Dr. Bargmann also is associate director of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior. She has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1995.
Dr. Bargmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received
the 2009 Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the 2004 Dargut and Milena Kemali International
Prize for Research in the Field of Basic and Clinical Neurosciences and the Charles Judson Herrick Award for comparative neurology
in 2000. She was awarded the Takasago Award for olfaction research and the W. Alden Spencer Award for neuroscience
research, both in 1997.
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