Date/Time/Location:

Wednesday, November 20
12 pm – 1 pm
SLU Orin Smith Auditorium and Zoom Webinar

“Brain perineuronal nets in health and disease”

Talk Description:
Brain perineuronal nets (PNNs) are chondroitin sulfate-glycosaminoglycan (CS-GAG) containing extracellular matrix structures that enmesh, and thereby regulate, neurons involved in sensory information relay. The negative-charged CS-GAGs drive the trapping and presentation of charged ions and proteins to the enmeshed neuron, and alterations in either PNN/CS-GAG abundance and/or sulfation patterning may influence these biological interactions. This presentation first highlights inter-regional differences in brain CS-GAG sulfation and composition across species, emphasizing the potential role and influence these extracellular matrix variations may exhibit on region-specific neuronal functioning. Additional evidence suggest that humans undergo a region-specific biphasic CS-GAG remodeling and induced neurocircuit plasticity with advanced aging, effects that also correlate with neurocognitive and macrostructural brain changes. Moreover, these age-associated changes are accelerated in neurometabolic and neurodegenerative disorders. Viral manipulation of PNN CS-GAG sulfation patterns in pre-clinical rodent studies induce altered neuronal and glia functioning in the brain, including dysregulated metabolic outcomes.

Biography:
Dr. Kimberly Alonge is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington and Program Director for Matrix Biology at the UW Medicine Diabetes Institute. Her research program focuses on understanding the functional significance of brain extracellular matrix reorganization in regulating neurocircuit activity in healthy and diseased states. Dr. Alonge’s current research projects utilize liquid and imaging mass spectrometry methodologies capable of spatially characterizing changes in brain chondroitin sulfate-glycosaminoglycan sulfation patterning of perineuronal net matrices, with an emphasis on rodent to primate species translatability. Her research program is support by NIH (DP2, R21), Department of Defense (DoD), American Diabetes Association (ADA), and Murdock Trust grants that span rodent, non-human primate, and human studies.