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Guo-li Ming, M.D., Ph.D.

Research summary

The Ming lab aims to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neuronal growth and guidance during central nervous system development and in adulthood. Using both in vitro and in vivo approaches, the team is investigating how growth cones can respond to gradients of diffusible guidance cues for the neuronal circuitry formation and the underlying molecular mechanisms.

They also are trying to understand the mechanisms of neurological diseases, including psychiatric disorders, arising from aberrant neural development and circuitry formation. In the adult brain, new neurons continuously arise from adult neural stem cells in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus and follow stereotypical patterns of migration and axon/dendrite projection to integrate into the adult CNS—axons go to the CA3 region and dendrites to the outer molecular layer. The team develops new approaches to study the neural development in the adult brain to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms and possibly shed light on strategies for treating CNS injuries and disease.

The team also develops technologies to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from patients with neurological diseases, including patients with Schizophrenia, to study human neural development under normal conditions and potential pathogenesis under disease condition.