faculty research

Corinna Burger

Lab Location: Bardeen Medical Laboratories

Contact Info:
Phone: 352.328.1279
Email: burger@neurology.wisc.edu
Publications: PubMed
Faculty Profile: Corinna Burger

Burger's Lab Members

David G. S. Barnett
Hilary Gerstein
Kenneth J. O'Riordan
Susan M.K. Osting
Carlos Rodrigo Gil del Alcázar

Research

Our lab is interested in two main problems in molecular neuroscience: the molecular biology of learning and memory, and the genetic mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders.

Learning and Memory:

Identification of putative learning and memory genes both in the young and aged rat using Microarrays constitute our starting tools to study the neurobiology of learning and memory going from genes to behavior.  Our ultimate goal is to understand the molecular rules that govern memory formation and plasticity in the CNS both early in life and with aging.

The first goal in the lab is to screen the genes that were identified in the array experiments at the functional level.  Towards that end, we are using recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) as a gene delivery system to overexpress or knock-down function of these candidate genes in the brain in a region-specific manner and examine the resulting phenotypes using well established behavioral tests.  Viral gene delivery is a fast way to screen for this long list of genes in a feasible time frame.  It takes approximately a couple of months to generate “somatic” transgenic animals from the purification of the virus to expression of the virus in the desired brain region of the animal, to testing the behavior.  This technology can also be used to manipulate the expression of one gene or several genes in combination, so the relationships between the different genes in a pathway can be assessed in vivo.

Neurodegenerative Disorders:

Our interest in neurodegenerative disorders has been focused on Parkinson’s disease.  We want to understand the triggering molecular mechanisms that lead to this devastating disorder.  In collaboration with Dr. Estela Andres at the Universidad Pontificia de Chile, we are trying to define the role of the transcription factor Nurr1 in the maintenance of the dopaminergic phenotype in the substantia nigra.  Nurr1 is a transcription factor essential for the mesencephalic dopaminergic phenotype.  Nurr1 knockout mice die after birth so studying the role of Nurr1 in the adult has been difficult.  We have created Nurr1 “somatic” knockouts in the adult rat midbrain using viral delivered ribozymes to investigate the role of Nurr1 in the maintenance of the adult dopaminergic phenotype.  We are also focusing on the identification of the unknown target genes that are transcribed by Nurr1.  We expect that understanding which genes are regulated by Nurr1 and the effects of down regulation or overexpression of this gene in the adult will help us understand the molecular profile of the dopaminergic neurons that degenerate during Parkinson’s disease.

Figure legend. Recombinant Adeno-Associated virus serotype1 transduction in the hippocampal formation shows robust transduction in the CA1 and the hilar regions. Green shows GFP fluorescence; red is NeuN immunoreactivity and labels the neuronal cell bodies in the hippocampal formation. Yellow represents the merge of neuron-specific staining (red) and GFP (green). Only the left side was injected. The right side serves as a negative control.