Jennifer Morgan

Senior Scientist and Director, Bell Center

Jennifer Morgan
Contact Information
Education
Ph.D., Neurobiology, Duke University School of Medicine, 2001
B.S. with Honors, Biology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995
MBLAffiliation
Bell Center
Research Area
Cell Biology
Models of Human Disease
Neuroscience
Regeneration

The laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Morgan studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which neurons communicate with each other at synapses, a process called synaptic transmission. We study mechanisms of normal synaptic transmission, as well as how neurotransmission is impacted by spinal cord injury and disease. One ongoing project involves identifying how synapses are deleteriously affected by Parkinson's disease, and we are currently developing strategies to slow or reverse disease-associated synaptic dysfunction. Another project is focused on understanding how neurotransmission can be restored after spinal cord injury by regenerative processes, such as axon and synapse regrowth, or other forms of neural plasticity. Ultimately, we want to understand how these regenerative processes contribute to restoring normal behaviors after injury and how to improve functional outcomes.

For these projects, we use sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) as our model organism. Lampreys are cyclostomes, which are the most basal extant group of vertebrates. Lampreys possess a subset of very large neurons that can be identified across animals, the giant reticulospinal (RS) neurons, which provides several advantages for our studies. First, as the name indicates, these RS neurons are giant! They have especially large axons (20-80 microns) and synapses (1-2 microns), which are easily an order of magnitude larger than in most vertebrate models. Second, these giant neurons are experimentally tractable and amenable to molecular manipulations both in the normal and regenerating state. To approach our questions, we utilize a variety of technical approaches including, candidate gene and transcriptome analyses, molecular perturbations, biochemistry, fluorescence imaging, histology, electron microscopy, electrophysiology, and behavior.

News and Research Highlights
Selected Publications

Wallace JN, Crockford ZC, Rom谩n-Vendrell C, Brady EB, Hoffman C, Vargas KJ, Potcoava M, Wegman ME, Alford ST, Milovanovic D,聽Morgan JR聽(2024) Excess phosphoserine-129聽a-synuclein induces synaptic vesicle trafficking and declustering defects at a vertebrate synapse.听Molecular Biology of the Cell.听35(1):ar10. doi: . (* Cover illustration)

Casiano Rivera CV, Wallace JN, Fisher GE,聽Morgan JR聽(2024) Acute introduction of phosphoserine-129聽a-synuclein induces severe swelling of mitochondria at lamprey synapses.听聽microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.001206. PMCID: PMC11157340.听doi: .

Maxson Jones K,聽Morgan JR聽(2023) Lampreys and spinal cord regeneration: 鈥渁 very special claim on the interest of zoologists,鈥 1830s-present.听Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.聽11:1113961. doi: . PMID: 37228651.听

Hamlet C, Fauci L,聽Morgan JR, Tytell ED (2023) Proprioceptive feedback amplification restores effective locomotion in a neuromechanical model of lampreys with spinal injuries.听Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.听120(11):e2213302120. doi: . PMID: 36897980.听

Brady EB, McQuillan M, Medeiros AT, Bubacco L, Sousa R, Lafer EM,聽Morgan JR聽(2023). Hsc70 rescues the synaptic vesicle trafficking defects caused by 伪-synuclein dimers.听microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.000737. PMID: 3698331.听doi:

Pattanayak R, Underwood R, Crowley MR, Crossman DK,聽Morgan JR, Yacoubian TA (2022) Deletion in chromosome 6 spanning alpha-synuclein and multimerin1 loci in the Rab27a/b double knockout mouse.听Scientific Reports聽12:9837 doi: .听

Katz HR, Arcese AA, Bloom O,聽Morgan JR聽(2022) Activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3) is a highly-conserved pro-regenerative transcription factor in the vertebrate nervous system.听Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.10:824036. doi: .听

Fouke KE, Wegman ME, Weber SA, Brady EB, Rom谩n-Vendrell C,聽Morgan JR聽(2021) Synuclein regulates synaptic vesicle clustering and docking at a vertebrate synapse.听Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.聽聽9:774650. doi: .听

Fies J, Gemmell BJ, Fogerson SM,聽Morgan JR, Tytell E, Colin SP (2021) Swimming kinematics and performance of spinal transected lampreys with different levels of axon regeneration.听Journal of Experimental Biology.听jeb.242639. doi: .听

Haspel G, Severi KE, Fauci LJ, Cohen N, Tytell ED,聽Morgan JR聽(2021) Resilience of neural networks for locomotion.听Journal of Physiology.听doi: .

Rom谩n-Vendrell C, Medeiros AT, Sanderson JB, Jiang H, Bartels T,聽Morgan JR聽(2021) Effects of excess brain-derived human聽a-synuclein on synaptic vesicle trafficking.听Frontiers in Neuroscience.聽15:639414 doi: .