Faculty

We are interested in understanding how synapses are formed, the final step in wiring a nervous system. In particular, the molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic specificity: how neurons recognize each other and how they make decisions about forming synapses between contacting neurites during development. We use molecular, genetic and cell biological tools to study this question in the nematode, C. elegans, which has a very simple nervous system containing only 302 neurons and approximately 6000 synapses.