Corey C. Harwell is an American neuroscientist who is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

Career

Harwell initially planned on pursuing a career in medicine, an early research experience in Cori Bargmann's laboratory led Harwell instead to the basic sciences and in particular to neurobiology. As a graduate student, Harwell conducted his thesis research at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

under

Elly Nedivi Elly Nedivi is an American neuroscientist. She is a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the William R. (1964) and Linda R. Young Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ea ...

. He studied the role of the

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

''cpg15'' ''(candidate plasticity gene 15)'' and its protein product in

neural development The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The fie ...

and

plasticity Plasticity may refer to: Science * Plasticity (physics), in engineering and physics, the propensity of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation under load * Neuroplasticity, in neuroscience, how entire brain structures, and the brain it ...

. ''Cpg15'' had been found to be a target of intracellular signaling pathways important for synaptic plasticity. Increases in ''cpg15'' expression caused changes in axon and

dendrite Dendrites (from Greek δένδρον ''déndron'', "tree"), also dendrons, are branched protoplasmic extensions of a nerve cell that propagate the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the n ...

growth, as well as

synapse In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell. Synapses are essential to the transmission of nervous impulses from ...

formation. Harwell and his colleague Ulrich Putz showed that expression of a soluble form of CPG15 promoted survival of cortical

neuron A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...

progenitors in early brain development. Additionally, Harwell, with members of Karel Svoboda's group, demonstrated that ''cpg15'' expression in adult mice could be diminished by sensory deprivation, raising the possibility that CPG15 functions in a neural activity-dependent manner. After receiving his PhD, Harwell completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Arnold Kriegstein's laboratory at the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

. There, Harwell investigated early neural development. He identified a role of the gene ''

sonic hedgehog Sonic hedgehog protein (SHH) is encoded for by the ''SHH'' gene. The protein is named after the character ''Sonic the Hedgehog''. This signaling molecule is key in regulating embryonic morphogenesis in all animals. SHH controls organogenesis and ...

'' (''shh'') and its receptor, BOC1, in the formation of connections between layer II/III cortical neurons and their postsynaptic targets, the layer V corticalfugal neurons. Additionally, Harwell characterized the relationship between cell lineage and distribution of developing cortical interneuron circuits and found that cell lineage does not determine clustering of cortical

interneuron Interneurons (also called internuncial neurons, relay neurons, association neurons, connector neurons, intermediate neurons or local circuit neurons) are neurons that connect two brain regions, i.e. not direct motor neurons or sensory neurons. I ...

s Following his postdoctoral work, Harwell became an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Neurobiology. In 2021, his laboratory moved to the

. His laboratory continues to focus on neural development.

Research

The Harwell Lab investigates how the developmental origins and lineages of different neuron types affects their function in the adult brain. The lab approaches these questions using circuit tracing, molecular biology, and genetic tools in mice. Currently, the lab seeks to characterize the molecular diversity of neural progenitors and dissect the genetic and epigenetic programs that drive the differentiation of these progenitors and their assembly into functional neural circuits. Recently, the lab has uncovered important roles for glial cells in neural development as well.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harwell, Corey Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American neuroscientists Harvard Medical School faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Louisville, Kentucky Tennessee State University alumni