NPB Neurobiology, Physiology & Behavior |
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| Karen Zito |
| Assistant Professor Center for Neuroscience 1515 Newton Court, Rm 203 Office (530) 752-7832 Lab (530) 752-7839 kzito (at) ucdavis (dot) edu |
| Degrees: B.S., Indiana University - Biology, 1991 Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley - Molecular and Cell Biology, 1998 |
| Awards: Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences |
| Graduate Group Affiliations: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Cell and Developmental Biology Neuroscience |
| Publications: Zito K, Scheuss V (2007) Glutamate: NMDA receptor function, physiological modulation. The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, edited by Larry Squire, Elsevier Press, in press. Zito K, Knott G, Shepherd GMG, Shenolikar S & Svoboda K (2004) Induction of spine growth and synapse formation by regulation of the spine actin cytoskeleton. Neuron 44: 321-334. Henry GL, Zito K & Dubnau J (2003) Chipping away at brain function: mining for insights with microarrays. Current Opinion Neurobiology 13: 570-576. Zito K (2003) The flip side of synapse elimination. Neuron 37: 1-2. Zito K & Svoboda K (2002) Activity-dependent synaptogenesis in the adult mammalian cortex. Neuron 35: 1015-1017. Koh IYY, Lindquist WB, Zito K, Nimchinsky EA & Svoboda, K. (2002) An Image Analysis Algorithm for Dendritic Spines. Neural Computation 14: 1283-310. Zito K & Murthy VN (2001) Dendritic spines. Current Biology 12: R5. Zito K, Parnas D, Fetter R, Isacoff EY, and Goodman CS (1999) Watching a Synapse Grow: Noninvasive Confocal Imaging of Synaptic Growth in Drosophila. Neuron 22: 719-729. Zito K, Fetter RD, Goodman CS & Isacoff EY (1997) Synaptic clustering of Fasciclin II and Shaker: Essential targeting sequences and role of Dlg. Neuron 19: 1007-1016. Goodman CS, Davis GW & Zito K (1997) The Many Faces of Fasciclin II: Genetic Analysis Reveals Multiple Roles During Axon Guidance, Synapse Formation, and Synaptic Growth and Plasticity. Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 62: 479-491. Zito K, Huttenhofer A & Pace NR (1993) Lead-catalyzed cleavage of ribonuclease P RNA as a probe for integrity of tertiary structure. Nucleic Acids Research 21: 5916-5920. Darr SC, Zito K & Pace NR (1992) Contributions of phylogenetically variable structural elements to the function of the ribozyme ribonuclease P. Biochemistry 31: 328-333. |
| Research Interests: The goal of our research is to understand at the cellular and molecular level how synaptic connections form during development of neural circuits in the mammalian cortex. Most of the excitatory synaptic connections in the cortex occur on dendritic spines, tiny protrusions that extend from the dendritic membrane. Dendritic spines are highly dynamic during development both in vitro and in vivo; periods of high motility coincide with synapse formation. Spine motility, driven by actin dynamics, is thought to allow the postsynaptic neuron to explore and sample presynaptic partners. In addition, alterations of spine dynamics and stability have been observed in response to sensory experience, leading to the hypothesis that these anatomical changes underlie the adaptive remodeling of cortical circuits. The identification and characterization of the molecules and mechanisms that control spine morphogenesis will be a crucial step toward understanding the formation and plasticity of cortical circuits. Our approach to this problem combines time-lapse imaging to observe nascent spine formation, and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to measure protein dynamics, with molecular manipulations of synaptic proteins to decipher their roles in the growth of dendritic spines and synapses. In addition, we use physiological measurements in combination with two-photon uncaging of glutamate to examine the function of nascent synapses at the single synapse level. |
| Laboratory Personnel: Zito Lab - Sarah Parrish (Jr Specialist), Georgia Woods (Neuroscience grad student) |
| Teaching Interests: Developmental Neurobiology; Cell Biology of the Neuron |