Associate Professor Beulah Leitch

Research

Associate Professor Leitch's research interests are in cellular and molecular neuroscience and focus on the structural and functional development of neurons and their synapses; also changes occurring at synapses during aging and in various brain disorders. Her group is particularly interested in changes that occur at synapses in relation to their synaptic proteins and receptors, as a result of genetic mutations, and how this relates to brain functional abnormalities and diseases, including epilepsy, schizophrenia, autism and ataxia.

A recent focus of the Leitch lab has been into the detection of newly synthesized proteins at synapses and in dendritic locations using high-resolution EM-immunogold techniques. This project is in collaboration with Professor Schuman's Lab, at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (MPI-BR), Frankfurt, Germany. The project is based on the novel FUNCAT-PLA and Puro-PLA techniques recently developed in the Schuman laboratory for labelling newly synthesised proteins in cultured neurons. This research will lay the groundwork for studying whether defects in local protein synthesis contributes to synaptic dysfunction underlying various brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.