Dr. Jessica Osterhout: Assistant Professor of Neurobiology
Jessica began her research career as an undergraduate assistant in Dr. Chris Doe’s laboratory at the University of Oregon, where she studied cellular mechanisms of neurodevelopment in drosophila. Coming from a disadvantaged socio-economic background, she credits this paid research experience in the Doe lab for providing unique exposure to neuroscience research and ultimately gaining admission to graduate school. She completed her Ph.D. thesis work in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Huberman at the University of California, San Diego, where she studied neurodevelopment of the visual system in mice. During her thesis she discovered molecular mechanisms that allow neurons from the eye to correctly connect to various target regions in the brain. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Jessica then moved to Cambridge, MA, to begin her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Catherine Dulac at Harvard University. During her postdoc, she started a new line of research utilizing the Dulac lab’s expertise in innate behavior and molecular neuroscience to address how the brain generates fever and other sickness behaviors during infection. This work was funded by the Jane Coffin Child’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Y Eva Tan Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the NINDS Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).
After completing her postdoctoral training, Jessica opened her laboratory in the Fall of 2022 in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, where her laboratory studies the neurobiology of sickness symptoms and behaviors. Her early work has received recognition and funding support from the Whitehall Foundation and the Klingenstein-Simmons Neuroscience Fellowship.
Outside of the laboratory, Jessica enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and colleagues.
Research in the Osterhout Lab:
The Osterhout lab aims to understand the neural basis of sickness. Using the latest approaches for circuit dissection and functional manipulation, combined with diverse behavioral tests and machine-learning-based analyses, the Osterhout lab is discovering the neurons that underly specific sickness symptoms. They use these data to understand how the brain generates sophisticated, sex-dependent behavioral responses during various types of infection and inflammation. They are also interested in how sickness severity and recovery are altered by the external or internal environment. Finally, using single-cell RNA-sequencing and spatial transcriptomics at the single-cell level, the Osterhout lab is investigating the mechanisms of communication between the immune system and the brain in response to different immune threats. By revealing how the brain senses immune responses and alters neural activity during infection, the Osterhout lab hopes to better understand how infection affects animal behavior and brain function and perhaps inform treatment strategies for the many disorders caused by immune system dysregulation.
More Info: http://osterhoutlab.com/
