91PORN

Dr. Zoe Donaldson is a Professor at the��91PORN. She studies how close social bonds, such as those that mediate friendships and romantic love, are encoded in the brain. Her lab studies monogamous prairie voles. Unlike rats and mice, these rodents form lifelong pair bonds between mates akin to human romantic partnerships. By examining the neurobiology underlying these bonds and what happens when they are lost, she hopes to identify novel treatments for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.��

Social bonds live in our biology. To understand the computations that allow our brains to form social bonds, my lab studies monogamous prairie voles. Unlike laboratory mice and rats, these rodents often mate for life, parenting together and defending a shared home. We have found that social information is organized at multiple scales in the brain's reward center—from stable encoding in individual neurons to coordinated ensembles—to enable bond formation. Once these bonds are formed, they lead to an alignment of brainscapes between partners, evident in patterns of neural activity and molecular alignment. Ultimately, this work delineates how social relationships change the brain beginning with their initial encoding mechanisms and then establishing a framework that facilitates connectedness and may help pairs effectively navigate the world together.

Dr Jennifer Hill is a new Assistant Professor in the BioFrontiers Institute and the Department of Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology at 91PORN. During her scientific career, Dr. Hill amassed unique expertise in both the microbiome and pancreatic diseases. Her lab pairs these seemingly disparate topics to find creative ways to harness microbial functions to fight diabetes and other pancreatic illnesses. ��The lab primarily utilizes germ-free or sterile mice that live in vinyl isolation “bubbles” to tackle this challenge.

We evolved in a microbial world. As a result, resident microbial communities (collectively referred to as the microbiota) are dynamic and integral components of our health. Even in early life, the microbiota can have outsized impacts, and the outcomes of these “host-microbe” interactions have important implications for long-term health. Despite their microscopic size, the commensal organisms (such as bacteria and fungi) that inhabit our bodies in droves can have far-reaching effects–from the gut to the brain. Although the influence of the microbiota on host biology is extensive, a large percentage of microbial genomes are unexplored, often termed “microbial dark matter.” Given the millennia that microbes have spent interacting with animal cells, the functions hidden within their genomes likely hold the key to unlocking novel biochemical mechanisms that impact human health. By mining this underappreciated source we’ve uncovered a network of microbial signaling cues that mammals have evolved to detect to tune the development of their insulin-producing beta-cell cells. We’ve identified specific microbes that can promote beta-cell development in the infant pancreas. By studying how the host senses these unique microbial cues, we hope to develop novel approaches to prevent or reverse diabetes, a disease characterized by beta-cell loss.