Rachel Wilson (neurobiologist)

Rachel Wilson is a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.[1] Wilson's work integrates electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, molecular genetics, functional anatomy, and behavior to explore how neural circuits are organized to react and sense a complex environment.

Rachel I. Wilson
Born
Kansas City, Missouri
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University;
University of California, San Francisco
AwardsMacArthur Fellow
Scientific career
FieldsNeurobiology
InstitutionsHarvard Medical School
Doctoral advisorRoger Nicoll

Education and early career

Wilson was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She received a B.A. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco in 2001, where she worked in the laboratory of Roger Nicoll. There, she worked on what her peers called "the project of death," searching for the molecule in the brain that enabled neurons to communicate in reverse—known as retrograde signaling—across synapses.[2] She discovered that a molecule known as endocannabinoids—which mimic the active ingredient in marijuana and naturally exist in the brain—were responsible for allowing post-synaptic neurons to communicate to their pre-synaptic counterparts.[3] Using rats as a model organism, she found that these molecules support cognitive function in the hippocampus, the center of the brain that is involved in learning and memory formation. Wilson's hypothesis, based on the number of cannabinoid receptors in the hippocampus, is that these endocannabinoids help the brain create new memories and strengthen connections between neurons.[4]

Following her Ph.D., Wilson became a postdoctoral researcher at California Institute of Technology, working in the laboratory of Gilles Laurent. There, she began working on Drosophila (fruit flies) as a model organism, seeking to understand how neurons integrate information from their surroundings.[2] She recorded electrical signals in the brain of these flies to understand how those signals corresponded to specific odors as stimuli.[2]

Research

In 2004, Wilson started her own laboratory and research program at Harvard University.

Awards

In 2007 Wilson won Science and Eppendorf AG's Grand Prize in Neurobiology for her work on the olfactory function of fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster,[5] to understand how the brain recognizes odors from patterns of impulses from olfactory receptor neurons.[6]

In 2008 she won a MacArthur Fellowship.[7]

In 2014, she won the inaugural national Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists, awarded by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences to "celebrate America’s most innovative and promising faculty-rank scientists and engineers."[8][9]

In 2012 she was made a full professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Neurobiology; she currently holds the Joseph B. Martin Professorship in Basic Research.

In 2017, Wilson was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences for her contributions to neurophysiology[10].

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References
  1. "2008 MacArthur Fellows:Rachel Wilson". MacArthur Foundation. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-09-27. Retrieved 2008-09-25.
  2. "Rachel Wilson: Death Defying". The Scientist Magazine®. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  3. Wilson, Rachel I.; Nicoll, Roger A. (2001-03-29). "Endogenous cannabinoids mediate retrograde signalling at hippocampal synapses". Nature. 410 (6828): 588–592. doi:10.1038/35069076. ISSN 1476-4687.
  4. Carroll, Linda (2002-01-29). "Marijuana's Effects: More Than Munchies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  5. "Young Neurobiologist Honored For Research Into The Fruit-Fly's 'Smell' Circuit". Medical News Today. 2007-10-26.
  6. "Mapping the fruit-fly's 'smell' circuit wins Eppendorf/Science Prize:Young neurobiologists honored for research". American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2007-10-25.
  7. Carolyn Y. Johnson (2008-09-23). "Local scientists honored, boosted by 'genius' grants: MacArthur fellowships stun winners". Boston Globe.
  8. "2014 National Laureates - Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists". blavatnikawards.org.
  9. "Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists". www.nyas.org.
  10. "Rachel Wilson". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
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