Emi Nagoshi

Affiliations: Faculty of Science, Department of Genetics and Evolution

Group name: Behavioral neuroscience and neurodegeneration

Keywords: circadian clock, genetics, locomotor behavior, Parkinson's disease

Research activities

How does the nervous system generate and modulate behaviors? What causes abnormal behaviors? The research in our lab is aiming at answering these questions at the molecular and neuronal levels. To this end, we have been pursuing two research foci related to locomotor behavior: 1. Molecular and neural basis of circadian locomotor behavior, and 2. Mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. We take a multidisciplinary approach combining molecular biology, high-throughput genomic techniques, genetics, behavioral assays and live-imaging. We have been using Drosophila melanogaster as a principal model system, because its small-scale nervous system and a battery of advanced genetic tools enable the interrogation of neural circuits and molecular mechanisms in vivo. For the study of Parkinsonís disease, we are now expanding our work into the research using mouse models.

Group website