Postdoctoral fellow, Skirball Institute, NYU School of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
December 1997-May 2002
PhD thesis in the lab of Dr. Ulrich Müller Friedrich Miescher Institute/Basel University; "The role of cell-extracellular matrix interactions in cerebellar development"
1993-1997
Biology honors course Biozentrum/Basel University
Publications:
Blaess, S., Kammerer, R. A. and Hall, H. (1998) Structural Analysis of the Sixth Immunoglobulin-Like Domain of Mouse Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule L1 and Its Interactions with avb3, aIIbb3, and a5b1 Integrins. J. Neurochem, 71: 2615-2625.
Graus-Porta, D., Blaess, S., Senften, M., Littlewood-Evans, A., Damsky, C., Huang, Z., Orban, P., Klein, R., Schittny, J. C., and Müller, U. (2001) ß1-class Integrins Regulate the Development of Laminae and Folia in the Cerebral and Cerebellar Cortex. Neuron, 31:(3) 367-79.
Blaess, S., Diana Graus-Porta, Richard Belvindrah, Randor Radakovits, Sebastian Pons, Amanda Littlewood-Evans, Mathias Senften, Huailian Guo, Yuqing Li, Jeffrey H. Miner, Louis F. Reichardt, and Ulrich Müller. (2004 Mar 31) ß1-Integrins are Critical for Cerebellar Granule Cell Precursor Proliferation.
J Neurosci, 24(13): 3402-12.
Donald E. White, Natasza A. Kurpios, Dongmei Zuo, John A. Hassell, Sandra Blaess, Ulrich Mueller and William J. Muller (2004). Targeted Disruption of b1-Integrin in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Human Breast Cancer Reveals an Essential Role in Mammary Tumor Induction. Cancer Cell, (2): 159-70.
Corrales, J. D., Rocco, G. L., Blaess, S., Guo, Alexandra L. Joyner (2004) Spatial pattern of sonic hedgehog signaling through Gli genes during cerebellum development Development, 131(22): 5581-90.
Zervas, M., Blaess, S., and Joyner, A.L. (2005) Classical Embryological Studies and Modern Genetic Analysis of Midbrain and Cerebellum Development. Current Topics in Developmental Biology, 69: 101-38. (The first two authors contributed equally to this review.)
Blaess, S., Corrales J.D., and Joyner, A.L. (2006) Distinct spatial and temporal regulation of Gli2 activator and Gli3 repressor function by Sonic Hedgehog in the developing mid/hindbrain. Development, 133(9): 1799-809
Corrales, J. D., Blaess, S., Mahoney, E.M., Joyner, A.L. (2006) The level of Sonic hedgehog signaling regulates the complexity of cerebellar foliation. Development, 133(9): 1811-21.
Research Interests:
My interest is in understanding how the midbrain and cerebellum develop, a process during which a simple neuroepithelial sheet is transformed into the highly diverse structures of the mature tectum, tegmentum and cerebellum. This transformation requires that distinct populations of neurons are generated in precise locations along the dorsal-ventral (DV) and anterior-posterior (AP) axes of the neural tube. AP patterning is regulated and refined by a local organizing center, the isthmic organizer and DV patterning is in part specified by Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) that is initially secreted from the ventral midline.
I am specifically interested in the role of the Shh pathway in midbrain and cerebellum development. The morphogenetic role of Shh signaling has been well documented in the spinal cord, but the detailed mechanism whereby the Shh pathway regulates patterning in midbrain and cerebellum is largely unknown.
In order to address how the Shh pathway regulates DV patterning in the midbrain and cerebellum and how these patterning events might further influence the formation of these structures I am analyzing and comparing mice with mutations in genes encoding components of the Shh pathway. Using tissue and stage-specific conditional gene deletion (Cre/loxP and an inducible CreERT system), I am also studying whether and how Shh signaling regulates other processes in addition to DV specification, such as proliferation and differentiation in the midbrain and cerebellum. A new research area is to study the role of Shh/Gli signaling in adult neural stem cells.
