JIAN ZUO, Ph.D.

Member

Department of Developmental Neurobiology

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Affiliated Associate Professor

Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology

The University of Tennessee College of Medicine

Address

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

262 Danny Thomas Place

Memphis, TN 38105

Tel: (901) 495-3891; Fax: (901) 495-2270;

Education

Ph.D. Institution: University of California, San Francisco, CA (1993)

Postdoctoral: Rockefeller University

Research Interests

The work in Dr. Zuo's laboratory is focused on the identification and characterization of genes important for the development and degeneration of cerebellar Purkinje cells and inner ear hair cells. They are taking two complimentary approaches. The first, positional cloning of mouse mutant genes, takes advantage of recent advances in the mouse genome project. Mouse cerebellar mutants, such as lurcher (Lc), Purkinje cell degeneration (pcd) and nervous (nr), are of particular interest. They have identified and characterized the Lc gene and established genetic and physical maps of pcd and nr loci. As the mutant pcd gene induces Bcl-2 dependent apoptosis, they are searching for downstream genes involved in the degenerative process in pcd mutant mice. The second approach takes advantage of a new technique that allows modification of endogenous genes in bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) with a green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter gene and further introduction of modified BACS into pronuclei to generate trans-genic mice with labeled neurons in the developing brain. They have chosen to modify three genes that have been shown to be expressed specifically in hair cells of the inner ear: alpha-9 AchR, Brn3.1 and delta-1 GluR. These transgenic mice will provide a resource for the construction of hair cell specific cDNA libraries at different developmental stages, as well as a tool for the introduction of exogenous genes into hair cells in vivo and for making hair cell specific knockout mice.

Links

St Jude Faculty - Jian Zuo

Recent Publications

• Wu X, Steigelman KA, Bonten E, Hu H, He W, Ren T, Zuo J, d'Azzo A. Vacuolization and alterations of lysosomal membrane proteins in cochlear marginal cells contribute to hearing loss in neuraminidase 1-deficient mice. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2009 Oct 24; [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 19857571
• Yamashita T, Liu J, Gao J, LeNoue S, Wang C, Kaminoh J, Bowne SJ, Sullivan LS, Daiger SP, Zhang K, Fitzgerald ME, Kefalov VJ, Zuo J. Essential and synergistic roles of RP1 and RP1L1 in rod photoreceptor axoneme and retinitis pigmentosa. J Neurosci. 2009 Aug 5;29(31):9748-60. PMID: 19657028
• Yu Y, Zuo J. The practical use of Cre and loxP technologies in mouse auditory research. Methods Mol Biol. 2009;493:87-102. PMID: 18839343
• Liu Z, Zuo J. Cell cycle regulation in hair cell development and regeneration in the mouse cochlea. Cell Cycle. 2008 Jul 15;7(14):2129-33. Epub 2008 Apr 22. PMID: 18635955
• Wu X, Wang X, Gao J, Yu Y, Jia S, Zheng J, Dallos P, He DZ, Cheatham M, Zuo J. Glucose transporter 5 is undetectable in outer hair cells and does not contribute to cochlear amplification. Brain Res. 2008 May 19;1210:20-8. Epub 2008 Mar 18. PMID: 18417103
• Weber T, Corbett MK, Chow LM, Valentine MB, Baker SJ, Zuo J. Rapid cell-cycle reentry and cell death after acute inactivation of the retinoblastoma gene product in postnatal cochlear hair cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Jan 15;105(2):781-5. Epub 2008 Jan 4. PMID: 18178626

view complete list of references (pubmed link)