Margarita Behrens

Margarita Behrens is a neuroscientist and biochemist. She is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where her lab studies the impact of oxidative stress on the post-natal brain through probing the biology of fast-spiking parvalbumin interneurons in models of schizophrenia. In 2009, Behrens began working as a staff scientist as the Salk Institute where she led a group of researchers within Terry Sejnowski's computational neuroscience laboratory studying the circuitry implicated in schizophrenia in rodent models. In an effort to dissect prefrontal cortical neurons in development, Behrens' lab uncovers novel subtypes of neurons through probing their unique DNA methylation patterns. Using single-nucleus sequencing technologies, Behrens has helped produce a novel dataset mapping the methylomes of both rodent and human prefrontal cortical neurons. This work has increased our knowledge of the diversity of cell types which provides an important platform for other neuroscientists to ask deeper questions about neural development in both health and disease.

Selected publications Source:

Selected awards

2019 NIH Brain Initiative Award 2019 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Expand Human Cell Atlas FEBS predoctoral Fellowship Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Fellowship