New CELL Faculty Member Profile – Jessica Rosin
Dr. Rosin is a newly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Oral Biological and Medical Sciences whose lab is located in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Building at UBC.
Jessica completed her PhD with John Cobb at the University of Calgary, where she studied the role of regulatory elements in contributing to Shox2 gene function in rodents, with a specific focus on the role of Shox2 during limb, cerebellar, and facial motor nucleus development. For her post-doc, Jessica joined the laboratory of Eric Turner at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, where she examined how different regulatory regions act in concert to coordinate proper Hmx1 expression and function during pinna and lateral facial morphogenesis. Upon completion of her first post-doc, Jessica switched her focus from gene regulation and transcription factor studies to understanding cellular heterogeneity, and particularly how a single cell type could act in different contexts to shape an organ, such as the fetal brain. In order to ask this question, Jessica joined the laboratory of Deborah Kurrasch at the University of Calgary for her second post-doc, where her work has demonstrated that embryonic microglia are critically important for the development of the brain. Jessica has shown that the embryonic hypothalamus is comprised of a heterogeneous population of microglia that are altered in a sexually dimorphic manner following gestational stress.
The processes governing proper development of the embryo are being recognized as increasingly complex in nature and highly sensitive to the maternal environment. As a new investigator at UBC, Dr. Rosin aims to understand how distinct populations of immune cells (e.g., microglia & macrophages) signal to nearby cells during embryogenesis to contribute to normal development. Her research also aims to determine how exposure to various forms of maternal challenge, such as infection, act through immune cells to negatively impact nearby cells and alter normal developmental programs to result in neurodevelopmental disorders and craniofacial defects.
Welcome Dr. Rosin!