Buszczak Lab
Principal Investigator: Michael Buszczak
Institution: The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Interspecies blastocyst complementation (IBC) holds great potential to open new avenues for neuroscience, offering a unique perspective on brain development and evolution. This technique introduces donor pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) into host blastocysts lacking essential organ development genes, enabling the formation of interspecies chimeras. Such chimeras allow for the development of donor-cell-enriched organs in host organisms, a method previously applied to create various organs but not yet successful for brain tissue. Our preliminary studies have introduced a C-CRISPR-based blastocyst complementation method (CCBC), enabling the generation of rat forebrain tissue in mice for the first time. This allows us to study brain development and function from an evolutionary angle, potentially transforming brain research and providing a foundation for ethical considerations regarding the use of human PSCs in animal brains. Building on this, our proposal aims to dissect the xenogeneic barriers affecting brain development between mice and rats, explore non-cell autonomous mechanisms in rat-mouse forebrain chimeras, and attempt to create forebrain tissues from a w…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R01NS147445-01: A blastocyst complementation approach to study forebrain development, evolution and function (2026)
- 5R01HD103627-05: Dissect the mechanisms underlying interspecies pluripotent stem cell competition (2026)
- 5R35GM144043-05: Genetic Dissection of Germ Cell Differentiation and Function (2026)
- 5R01AG079513-05: Characterization of how mRNA translation influences reproductive aging (2026)
- 5UG3CA290312-03: Developing ribosome biogenesis inhibitors for the prevention of cancer (2026)
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