Susan Dymecki

Susan M. Dymecki (born June 19, 1960) is an American geneticist and neuroscientist and director of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD Program at Harvard University. Dymecki is also a professor in the Department of Genetics and the principal investigator of the Dymecki Lab at Harvard. Her lab characterizes the development and function of unique populations of serotonergic neurons in the mouse brain. To enable this functional dissection, Dymecki has pioneered several transgenic tools for probing neural circuit development and function. Dymecki also competed internationally as an ice dancer, placing 7th in the 1980 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Early life and education Dymecki was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 19, 1960. Before becoming a scientist, Dymecki was a competitive ice dancer.

After completing her master's degree, she pursued her MD-PhD in 1985 at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, studying under Stephen Desiderio. During her PhD, Dymecki discovered a new gene expressed in B cells, called blk for B Lymphoid Kinase, which helps to initiate an immune response. Her technology has aided many researchers in achieving gene insertion, deletion, and modulation as well as label cell lineages to explore developmental stages. This gene encodes a tyrosine kinase protein, and is specifically expressed in B cell lineages. Dymecki also found that blk is expressed in pro-, pre-, and mature B cells, but not the antibody producing plasma cells. Using Flp recombinase, Dymecki shows that her genetic constructs can be expressed in mammalian cells to activate specific genes. Dymecki's paper was the inaugural paper to show that Flp technology could be used to make specific alterations to the mouse genome.

As the principal investigator of the Dymecki Lab, Dymecki runs a research program dedicated to exploring the development and function of serotonin neurons in the rodent brain. By creating the FLPe deleter strain, which uses an enhanced, thermostable version of Flp, Dymecki found that her tool was just as effective as the already established Cre-loxP tools.

Serotonergic diversity in mouse brain Dymecki's lab uses their transgenic tools to probe the diversity of serotonin neurons in the central nervous system. Using a variety of genetic profiling and developmental mapping techniques, Dymecki and her team were able to identify various subpopulations of serotonin neurons within the brainstem, and show the immense transcriptional diversity both between and within anatomically defined subpopulations of serotonin neurons. When these neural subtypes were silenced, male aggressive behavior in mice was increased, suggesting the unique role played in a behavior by a very specific population of brainstem serotonergic neurons. They found two serotonergic projections, a GABAergic projection that decreased aggression when stimulated, and a cholinergic projection that increased aggression when stimulated. By chemogenetically manipulating single sub-populations of serotonin neurons, they found one population, expressing Egr1-Pet1 that increases ventilation in response to acidosis.

Awards and honors

2018 Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2017 A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award 2012 Distinguished Investigator Grantees Brain and Behavior Research 2004 Biological and Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. Program mentoring award John Merck Scholar Embracing diversity in the 5-HT neuronal system. Okaty BW, Commons KG, Dymecki SM. Nat Rev Neurosci 2019-04-04 Acute perturbation of Pet1-neuron activity in neonatal mice impairs cardiorespiratory homeostatic recovery. Dosumu-Johnson RT, Cocoran AE, Chang Y, Nattie E, Dymecki SM. Elife 2018-10-23 Sexual dimorphism of microglia and synapses during mouse postnatal development. Weinhard L, Neniskyte U, Vadisiute A, di Bartolomei G, Aygün N, Riviere L, Zonfrillo F, Dymecki S, Gross C. Dev Neurobiol 2018-06-01 Activity of Tachykinin1-Expressing Pet1 Raphe Neurons Modulates the Respiratory Chemoreflex. Hennessy ML, Corcoran AE, Brust RD, Chang Y, Nattie EE, Dymecki SM. J Neurosci 2017-02-15 Impaired respiratory and body temperature control upon acute serotonergic neuron inhibition. Ray RS, Corcoran AE, Brust RD, Kim JC, Richerson GB, Nattie E, Dymecki SM. Science 2011-07-29 Linking genetically defined neurons to behavior through a broadly applicable silencing allele. Kim JC, Cook MN, Carey MR, Shen C, Regehr WG, Dymecki SM. Neuron 2009-08-13 Molecularly and temporally separable lineages form the hindbrain roof plate and contribute differentially to the choroid plexus. Hunter NL, Dymecki SM. Development 2007-10-01 Assembly of the brainstem cochlear nuclear complex is revealed by intersectional and subtractive genetic fate maps. Farago AF, Awatramani RB, Dymecki SM. Neuron 2006-04-20 Hindbrain rhombic lip is composed of discrete progenitor cell populations allocated by Pax6. Landsberg RL, Awatramani RB, Hunter NL, Farago AF, DiPietrantonio HJ, Rodriguez CI, Dymecki SM. Neuron 2005-12-22 Origin of the precerebellar system. Rodriguez CI, Dymecki SM. Neuron 2000-09-01 High-efficiency deleter mice show that FLPe is an alternative to Cre-loxP. Rodríguez CI, Buchholz F, Galloway J, Sequerra R, Kasper J, Ayala R, Stewart AF, Dymecki SM. Nat Genet 2000-06-01 Flp recombinase promotes site-specific DNA recombination in embryonic stem cells and transgenic mice. Dymecki SM. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1996-06-11 A modular set of Flp, FRT and lacZ fusion vectors for manipulating genes by site-specific recombination. Dymecki SM. Gene 1996-06-01 Specific expression of a tyrosine kinase gene, blk, in B lymphoid cells. Dymecki SM, Niederhuber JE, Desiderio SV. Science 1990-01-19