Alex Pollen, PhD

Professor

Primary Thematic Area

M_Neurology

Secondary Thematic Area

Research Summary

We study how genetic changes that accumulated over the last 6 million years of human evolution influence specialized features of brain development using single cell genomics, cerebral organoid models of ape brain development, and genome engineering.

Websites

Pollen Lab

UCSF Profiles

Publications

Molecular Identity of Human Outer Radial Glia during Cortical Development.

Cell

Pollen AA, Nowakowski TJ, Chen J, Retallack H, Sandoval-Espinosa C, Nicholas CR, Shuga J, Liu SJ, Oldham MC, Diaz A, Lim DA, Leyrat AA, West JA, Kriegstein AR

Low-coverage single-cell mRNA sequencing reveals cellular heterogeneity and activated signaling pathways in developing cerebral cortex.

Nature biotechnology

Pollen AA, Nowakowski TJ, Shuga J, Wang X, Leyrat AA, Lui JH, Li N, Szpankowski L, Fowler B, Chen P, Ramalingam N, Sun G, Thu M, Norris M, Lebofsky R, Toppani D, Kemp DW, Wong M, Clerkson B, Jones BN, Wu S, Knutsson L, Alvarado B, Wang J, Weaver LS, May AP, Jones RC, Unger MA, Kriegstein AR, West JA

Publications

Molecular Identity of Human Outer Radial Glia during Cortical Development.

Low-coverage single-cell mRNA sequencing reveals cellular heterogeneity and activated signaling pathways in developing cerebral cortex.

Human-specific loss of regulatory DNA and the evolution of human-specific traits.

How unique is the human neocortex?

Expression Analysis Highlights AXL as a Candidate Zika Virus Entry Receptor in Neural Stem Cells.