John Mich, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Brain Science

Bio:

John Mich joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2014 as Scientist. As part of the Human Cell Types group, he is contributing to a developmental map of human brain cell types. John became interested in the generation of human neural cell types when he was studying how Hedgehog signaling patterns the developing central nervous system during his Ph.D. in Biochemistry with James Chen at Stanford. It was clear that new techniques were sorely needed to apply our expanding knowledge of central nervous system development to human medical needs. Accordingly, John carried out postdoctoral research with Sean Morrison where he developed techniques to isolate neural stem cells and study their properties directly. These techniques will be expanded and adapted to a complete developmental map of the human brain cortex.

Research Focus:

As part of the Human Cell Types group, I will map human brain development by systematically identifying all the cell types that arise, and then charting the lineal relationships among those cell types. To facilitate this human lineage map, I am adapting flow cytometry techniques I developed in mouse brain to the human brain, using both authentic human samples as well as in vitro models of human development. New cell types will be discovered by unbiased antigen screening, systematically interrogated for gene expression profiles with single-cell transcriptomics, and then assembled into a lineage map. These data will be essential toward a complete understanding of how the human brain’s incredible diversity is achieved.

Expertise

Neural stem cells

Flow cytometry

Organic chemistry

Research Programs

Molecular Networks