Dr. Mei Zhen

When neurons form synapses to communicate with each other, the wiring for our sensory, motor, and cognitive experience is formed. Dr. Mei Zhen is studying how synapses form in the nervous system, the wiring of the brain that makes us who we are. Her goal is a breakthrough in understanding brain development, synapse formation, and how to treat the brain when it is diseased or damaged.

Dr. Zhen's research has implications for a vast range of diseases including psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, depression and bi-polar disorder, neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, and genetic disorders related to development of the nervous system. To date, the biochemical mechanisms responsible for synapse formation are still not well understood, in large part because of the size and complexity of the nervous system. In order to study synapse formation Dr. Zhen uses an innovative research model, a small roundworm called C. elegans that has fewer than ten thousand synapses compared to the estimated 1014 to 1015  (that's a quadrillion) synapses in the adult human brain.

Dr. Zhen has shown that, in spite of the vast difference in complexity, the human and C. elegans are likely to use similar sets of genes to make synapses. Her innovative approach has provided much more information than earlier methods of studying synapses, which called for a labour-intensive preparation of animal samples to be studied with an electron microscope.

Dr. Zhen's lab is at the forefront of building a knowledge base of the human brain in health and disease, an important tool for the field of neurobiology.