Research Interests
I can write down a recipe on an index card using far less information than it takes to completely describe a finished dish. The recipe gives me more information about universal, fundamental characteristics of the dish than does an image of one instance of the cooked product. My lab seeks to understand how neural circuits are organized in the brain to interpret information in a variety of ways. We think the best way to do this is to study the recipes (or algorithms) that development uses to construct neurons and circuits. Rather than on an index card, these recipes are written in DNA.
We focus on chemosensory circuits, as we know that there are different kinds of neural circuits that use chemosensory information to different ends–for instinctual behaviors versus for learning. Our experimental work is conducted in fruit flies due to the pleasing characteristics of their brain organization and development. We hypothesize that the algorithms used to generate learning versus instinctual circuits during development are very different from one another, and require very different amounts of genomic information.
Josie Clowney joined MCDB in 2017. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Ruta Lab at Rockefeller University. She did her Ph.D. with the Lomvardas Lab at the University of California, San Francisco. Her undergraduate work was at the University of Michigan where she majored in Cellular and Molecular Biology and did research with Cunming Duan.
DEI Statement
I try to foster a culture of abundance in the lab and create an environment in which trainees are able to be their "whole selves." I am also working to increase equity in how undergraduates obtain research experience.