The Second Century Initiative (2CI) brought more than 80 leading scholars and researchers across a diverse array of disciplines; its successor program, the Next Generation Program, continues to do so. Each faculty member has provided the university with their unique perspectives and leadership in their fields. Their work moves forward important and innovative research and scholarship, while lifting the reputation of Georgia State University and its colleges/schools for work addressing the challenges of the 21st century.
This article is part of a series highlighting individual faculty members and their perspectives through a question-and-answer format. Assistant Professor Angela Mabb came to Georgia State in the 2nd round of the 2CI, and is a professor in the Neuroscience Institute.
Q:Can you tell me briefly about your research and scholarship?
A: My research is focused on gaining a basic understanding of nervous system disorders, which may ultimately allow for the design of therapeutic intervention strategies for neurological disease. We predominantly study the ubiquitin pathway, which is represented by almost 1,000 different protein-coding genes in humans. Disruption in ubiquitin pathway signaling and mutations in ubiquitin genes are implicated in numerous neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and rare disorders like Gordon Holmes syndrome.
Q:What first interested you in your field of expertise?
A: I was not “formally” trained as a neuroscientist. I received my undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Bio-Molecular Science and my Ph.D. degree in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My work at UW-Madison required using cancer cell lines to understand the mechanisms in which these cells become resistant to cancer treatment. At the time, I was completely unaware of the neurosciences. Luckily, toward the end of my Ph.D., I was exposed to a lecture on the nervous system and was enamored with the morphological complexities of cells in the brain. For example, neurons take up a massively greater surface area than that of an epithelial (skin) cell. They also contain thousands of individualized microcompartments in which signal transduction cascades can separately take place. I was surprised that not many researchers were focused on understanding signal transduction pathways that involved ubiquitination cascades in neurons and thought that applying what I had learned in the cancer field would be a new and exciting challenge for me. So, I entered the neurosciences field as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Michael Ehlers’ lab at Duke University. Prior to joining Mike’s lab, I spent the summer educating myself by reading neuroscience text books like “Synapses” written by Nobel laureate, Thomas Südhof, conducting online research, and reading neuroscience journals.
Q: What did you find attractive about Georgia State?
A: I was very excited about Georgia State’s commitment to innovation and investment in research along with its collaborative nature. I also loved the diversity of our student body and the fact that Georgia State is truly committed to student success regardless of economic/racial demographics. As a first-generation college student, it is a topic that I am very passionate about. And, of course, I love that Georgia State is in the heart of downtown Atlanta. It’s a vibrant and exciting place to be.
Q:How have your research and scholarship grown since you first arrived at Georgia State?
A: My research program has grown immensely since starting at Georgia State almost 3 years ago. Soon after opening my lab, I received a 3-year grant from the Whitehall Foundation to study how protein ubiquitination pathways are important for learning. This grant also supported our first research paper published in Neuron in collaboration with a group at the University of Warwick in the UK. Our work received international attention from multiple news outlet sources, opened up new opportunities to present our findings at an international meeting in Boston, MA and resulted in giving an invited lecture in the Netherlands. Beyond research, I have had the opportunity to teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at Georgia State and have mentored incredibly talented students in the lab, ranging from high school students to postdoctoral fellows. I have attended multiple international meetings, published papers, written numerous grants, and facilitated new collaborations within and outside Georgia State.
Q:What sorts of collaborations have you been able to build at Georgia State, both within the university and outside of the institution?
A: We have collaborators within (Dr. Dan Cox) and outside our department that include Mathematics and Statistics (Dr. Igor Belykh), Chemistry (Dr. Jenny Yang and Dr. Jun Yin), Computer Science (Dr. Ying Zhu), and Nutrition (Dr. Huanbiao Mo). In 2018, we published a paper with Dr. Ying Zhu on the prevalence of ubiquitin ligase mutations in rare and common neurological disorders. We have also written grants with many of our collaborators. We still maintain a strong relationship with our international colleague in the UK (Dr. Sonia Correa) and have initiated a new collaboration with a group at Boston University (Dr. Weiming Xia). These interactions give us an opportunity to pursue our research interests with renewed and innovative perspectives.
Q: What new developments do you foresee with your research/scholarly development in the future?
A: We have many new developments on the horizon. I am very excited about our current efforts to image neural networks in awake behaving mice, which allows us to directly “spy” on neurons that get activated in the brain of a mouse while it is learning. We are now attempting to understand how neurons encode learned information with the intention of gaining insight into how learning impairments lead to malfunctions in the “neural code”. This is important because circuit malfunction is known to occur in aging and prematurely in neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Another exciting project is our development of new transgenic mouse lines to study neurodegenerative disease. We intend to use these transgenic mice to understand how neuronal and peripheral factors cause neurodegeneration in the brain. Our research at Georgia State has resulted in upcoming invitations to speak at Japan’s Society for Neuroscience meeting, Poland’s Society for Neuroscience meeting, and the Excitatory Synapses and Brain Function Gordon Research Conference in Manchester, NH.
– Kiana Colquitt, Graduate Administrative Assistant