About Dr. Featherstone's Research

All perception, thought, and behavior in animals depends on information transfer via glutamatergic synapses. In the Featherstone lab, we use molecular genetic techniques to figure out how glutamatergic synapses form and how information flow in these synapses is subsequently controlled.

We do most of this using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). Individual identifiable glutamatergic synapses in flies are reliably accessible in situ throughout development for a variety of powerful techniques, including electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry, voltage clamp electrophysiology, and quantifiable confocal fluorescent optical imaging (all of which we use). In addition, a century’s worth of molecular tools and techniques are available for manipulating the fly genome – arguably more than for any other animal. This makes it relatively easy to ascertain the molecular basis of many different biological processes, including brain development and synaptic function. Knowledge gained from flies has repeatedly been shown to be broadly applicable to all animals, including humans. Over 77% of human disease genes and 87% of human mental retardation genes have Drosophila orthologs.

You can read much more on our lab's web page: http://www.uic.edu/˜def.

Representative Publications

Yael Grosjean, Micheline Grillet, Hrvoje Augustin, Jean-Francois Ferveur, and David E. Featherstone. (2007) A glial amino acid transporter controls synapse strength and homosexual courtship in Drosophila. Nature Neuroscience (Dec; DOI:)

David E. Featherstone and Scott A. Shippy. (2007) Regulation of synaptic transmission by ambient extracellular glutamate. The Neuroscientist (Oct; DOI: 10.1177/1073858407308518)

Hrvoje Augustin/Yael Grosjean, Kaiyun Chen, Qi Sheng, and David E. Featherstone. (2007) Nonvesicular release of glutamate by glial xCT transporters suppresses glutamate receptor clustering in vivo. Journal of Neuroscience 27:111-123

Faith L.W. Liebl, Kristen M. Werner, Qi Sheng, Brian D. McCabe, and David E. Featherstone. (2006) A Genome-wide P-element Screen for Drosophila Synaptogenesis Mutants. Journal of Neurobiology 66(3):332-347

Faith L.W. Liebl, Kaiyun Chen, Julie Karr, Qi Sheng, and David E. Featherstone. (2005) Increased Synaptic Microtubules and Altered Synapse Development in Drosophila Sec8 Mutants. BMC Biology 3:27

Faith L.W. Liebl and David E. Featherstone. (2005) Genes Involved in Drosophila Glutamate Receptor Expression and Localization. BMC Neuroscience 6:44

K. Chen, C. Merino, S.J. Sigrist, and D.E. Featherstone. (2005) The 4.1 Protein Coracle Mediates Subunit-selective Anchoring of Drosophila Glutamate Receptors to the Postsynaptic Actin Cytoskeleton. Journal of Neuroscience 25(28):6667-6675