01 August 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Scintillon team to play key role in center for creating bioluminescent neuroscience tools

San Diego, CA

In a new collaboration, scientists will advance and freely circulate a research technology that makes brain cells able to produce, respond to, and communicate with light.

Nathan Shaner, Ph.D. will lead Scintillon Institute’s contribution to a national center dedicated to developing and disseminating new tools based on bioluminescence. The five-year grant from the National Science Foundation aims to develop tools to give nervous system cells the ability to make and respond to light. Neuroscientists can use these tools to manipulate and observe the circuitry of the brain in a variety of model organisms.

“NeuroNex Technology Hub” is a new collaboration of labs at Brown University, Central Michigan University and the Scintillon Institute. The team will improve upon and combine several unique bioengineering technologies to create new research capabilities, rooted in bioluminescence-the natural ability of cells to make light. They will then make their advances rapidly, easily, and freely available to the global scientific community.  

Shaner joins co-principal investigators Diane Lipscombe, Brown professor of neuroscience and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science, and Ute Hochgeschwender, professor at CMU, on a team led by Christopher Moore, a professor of neuroscience at Brown. Justine Allen, a Brown neuroscience PhD alumna, will be the center’s administrative director.

Creating a curriculum, which combines elements of biology, chemistry, physics and engineering, to engage and educate high school students will be a key facet of the center’s mission.

“The highly visual nature of this research is a great way to get young people interested in science,” said Shaner. “Being able to see living neurons lighting up as they fire under a microscope can be a transformative experience for them.”

Scintillon Institute proudly hosts

Michael Karin, Ph.D.

 Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Ben and Wanda Hildyard Chair for Mitochondrial and Metabolic Diseases, American Cancer Society Research Professor (UCSD)

“Positive and Negative Regulation of the NLRP3 Inflammasome Implications on Cancer, Aging and Neurodegeneration”

on October 24^th

at 1pm

Scintillon seminar room at 6868 Nancy Ridge Drive

Scintillon Institute congratulates A. Chakraborty and Z. Fullerton, the Grand Prize Winners of Scintillon Institute's STEM Art Contest!

A. Chakraborty's dolphin had our team doing flips at the San Diego Festival of Science & Engineering EXPO day.

Z. Fullerton's dragonfly created such a buzz at CSUSM's Super STEM Saturday that we just had to recreate it in the Shaner Lab's award winning Fluorescent Proteins.

On June 10th

Scintillon Institute proudly hosts

Charles F. Stevens, M.D. Ph.D.

the Vincent J. Coates Professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studies, former investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and member of US Academy of Sciences