collaboration projects
A variety of projects that I have contributed to in genomics and neuroscience.
I have contributed to a variety of collaborative research projects to either assist or have a leading role as a bioinformatician. Some of these projects have been closely related to my work in the Alzheimer’s field while others have been in other subfields of genomics and neuroscience.
Relapse to cocaine-seeking is regulated by medial habenula Nr4a2
In this project, we sought to investigate the role of the immediate early gene and transcription factor Nr4a2 in cocaine-seeking behaviors. This is an ongoing collaboration project between the Swarup Lab and the Wood Lab at UC Irvine combining single-cell genomics with behavioral neuroscience. Our work found that expressing the Nr4a2 dominant negative isoform (Nurr2c) specifically in the medial habenula resulted in a near complete block of relapse-like behavior. We deeply characterized the transcriptomic changes following this Nr4a2 manipulation using single-nucleus RNA-seq, revealing changes in transcriptional networks related to addiction and neuroplasticity. This work was recently accepted for publication (Childs & Morabito et al., 2024).
Dysregulated transcriptional regulation of remyelination in aging mice
In this ongoing collaboration with the the lab of Dr. Robin Franklin (Altos Labs), we aimed to study the gene-regulatory landscape of remyelination using single-nucleus ATAC-seq and RNA-seq. Our experimental design included multiple timepoints following demyelination to track the molecular changes during regeneration, and we compared samples from young and aged mice to determine how recovery changes with aging. We used our multi-omic measurements to model transcription factor (TF) regulatory networks in the oligodendrocyte lineage, and we identified a set of TFs critical for regeneration. A manuscript describing this is currently in preparation (Dimas, Morabito, and Rawji et al., 2024).