Our Mission

The long-term goal of our research is to uncover fundamental mechanisms underlying the development, function, and maintenance of the nervous system. the premise underlying much of our research is that genew and genetic programs controlling the generation of neurons during the formative phase of nervous systemn development are fundamentally related to those that control their function and maintenance later in life. By studying both processes, we strive to uncover core mechanisms that govern brain development, function, and maintenance, which we hope will help decipher how neurological disorders arise when these mechanisms malfuntion. We anticipate that such knowledge will ultimately lead to novel therapeutic stategies for neurodevelopmental, psychiatric, and neurodegenerative disorders, as well as malignant brain tumors. We use Drosophilia melanogaster as our experimental system, because of the availability of sophisticated genetic tool and abundant cpmarative genomic data, and we are using various mammalian systems to test the conservation of the players and prinicples we uncover from our Drosophila studies.

— Bingwei Lu