The Functional Genomics department studies the presynaptic nerve terminal in health and disease.
We study presynaptic mechanisms that adjust synaptic transmission (presynaptic plasticity), the trafficking & fusion of neuropeptide vesicles (dense core vesicles) and presynaptic mechanisms of degeneration.
We love to share our work & insights with society. We have produced short films on brain myths and the Virtual Brain Experience, that allows you to see the brain from within. We also collaborate with the Museumnacht and explain our science to lay people, school children, patients & their caretakers and clinicians.
The Functional Genomics (FGA) department was established in 2001 when Matthijs Verhage moved in from Utrecht with a small team.
FGA is part of the Human Genetics Department of Amsterdam UMC, as well as the Life Sciences faculty of the VU University. Furthermore, FGA is embedded in Amsterdam Neuroscience.
Thijmen Ligthart received the DPAN presenter award for his presentation about granulovacuolar degeneration bodies that mark neuronal resilience to tau-induced disruption of protein synthesis.
Networks of nerve cells in our brain process information at high speed. Some cells transfer more than 100 signals per second to the next cell in the circuit by contact points between them, the synapses. Neuroscientists from the CNCR discovered how mobility of molecules on the receiving side of synapses support information processing.
The Hersenstichting has awarded prof. dr. Wiep Scheper of the Molecular Neurodegeneration lab at FGA with €500.000 to follow up their research on Granulovacuolar degeneration bodies (GVBs). GVBs are found in a subset of neurons with early tau pathology in the brain of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and tau-related frontomporal dementias.
