In the Kucenas Lab, we value and welcome all individuals regardless of how we look, who we love, where we came from, what we believe, or how we live. We embrace and celebrate our differences not only because it is right, but because they also strengthen our lab and improve our science. With these values, we will strive for inclusive excellence and will not tolerate hate, discrimination, or harassment of any form in our community. In our pursuit of this goal, we will listen with compassion and patience when others share their ideas, opinions, and experiences, we will speak up with courage against acts of injustice, and we will continue to grow and evolve as humans and scientists as we learn from our mistakes and build on our achievements.

We study all things glia!

Glial Tiling

Glial-Glial Interactions

Glial Cell Development

Glial Diversity

Glial-Mediated Debris Clearance

Regeneration

In the Kucenas Lab, we are fascinated by the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive glial development. We historically have studied how glia engineer neural development via glial-glial and neural-glial interactions. Using zebrafish (Danio rerio), coupled with genetic and pharmacological perturbation, single cell manipulation, laser ablation, small molecule screening, single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNAseq), proximity proteomics, and in vivo, time-lapse imaging, we have discovered novel glial populations, revealed how glia communicate in several unique contexts, and created many new tools for our studies and the broader community. Our approach to science is to “chase the weird” and continue to reveal the complex and essential roles of all things glia!


See our Projects page for more details!