Teiichi Furuichi
Keynote lecture
Will talk about: The molecular mechanisms of brain development and disorders
Teiichi Furuichi is a Professor in Molecular Neuroscience in the Department of Applied Biological Science at the Tokyo University of Science in Japan. He graduated from Shinshu University, did doctoral studies in microbial development and genetics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and received his Ph.D. from the Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1986. He joined the faculty staff at the National Institute for Basic Biology (Research Associate in 1989) and the Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo (Associate Professor in 1992) to study molecular and developmental neuroscience focusing on the IP3 receptor-mediated intracellular Ca2+ signaling. He became a Team Leader at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute and started a project of systematizing the transcriptomic basis underlying the postnatal development of mouse cerebellum in 1999. His group released the Cerebellar Development Transcriptome Database (CDT-DB), one of the publicly-accessible database platforms supported by the Japan Node of the INCF, in 2005. His current research interests are in (1) studying the molecular mechanisms of brain development and its disorders and (2) attempting to systematize the transcriptomic basis underlying the development, function, and dysfunction stages and states of the brain. He now acts as the project leader of the Brain Transcriptome Database (BrainTx) (http://www.cdtdb.neuroinf.jp), formerly the CDT-DB.
The brain is a complex structure and its basic design is attributable to the controlled expression of thousands of specific genes in time and space. We aim to create an integrated database platform BrainTx (formerly CDT-DB) for visualizing and analyzing the transcriptome that underlie the various stages and states of the mammalian brain. Abnormalities in gene expression patterns are thought to affect normal brain development and behaviors. The involvement of multiple-genetic factors in the risk of autism-spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental disorder, is strongly indicated besides possible association with environmental factors. In combination with the information on genome-wide association studies of ASD, the transcriptome database is expected to provide a foundation for mining and analyzing ASD-associated gene candidates. In this presentation, I will talk about our brain transcriptome database project and mouse models with ASD-associated mutations.
