Team

Staff Profiles

Senior Scientist

Rebecca Hodge joined the Allen Institute as a Scientist II in the Human Cell Types program in March of 2014. Prior to joining the Institute, she conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Hevner at the University of Washington and the Center for Integrative Brain Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. There, she studied the actions of transcription factors during the process of neurogenesis (the generation of neurons) in both the developing and adult brain. She completed herundergraduate training at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia where she received a Bachelor’s degree (B.Sc.) in animal physiology. Her graduate training was completed in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, BC. Her Ph.D. work at UBC focused on the role of growth factors in regulating neural stem cell development and the generation of neurons during early development of the mammalian cerebral cortex.

Research Interests

At the Allen Institute for Brain Science, I am part of the Human Cell Types program, which seeks to understand the unique structural and functional characteristics of the human cerebral cortex. In order to achieve this goal, we are striving to classify and describe the diversity of neuronal and glia cell types that exist in the developing and adult human brain. We plan to build upon previous human gene expression atlases created at the Allen Institute, and extend this work to comprehensively describing the molecular characteristics of cells in the human cerebral cortex at the level of single cell gene expression. We will use high throughput qRT-PCR and RNA-Seq methodologies to conduct transcriptional profiling of a large number of single cells derived from specific stages and regions of the human cerebral cortex. This data will allow us to comprehensively understand the molecular signatures that discriminate individual cell types during brain development and in the adult. The molecular classification data that we generate will be combined with morphological, anatomical, and physiological data generated by other members of the Human Cell Types team to enable a quantitative classification of the breadth of cell types that exist within the human brain.

Expertise

Developmental neuroscience
Molecular biology
Genomics
Stem cell biology

Research Programs

Human Cell Types

Epigenetic landscape and AAV targeting of human neocortical cell classes

bioRxiv
February 19, 2019

Mich JK, Hess EE, Graybuck LT, Somasundaram S, Miller JA, Ding Y, Shapovalova NV, Fong O, Yao S, Mortrud M, Chong P, Bertagnolli D, Goldy J, Casper T, Kroll M, Hodge RD, Bakken TE, Yao Z, Dee N, Cetin A, Smith KA, Gwinn RP, Cobbs C, Ko AL, Ojemann JG, Keene CD, Silbergeld DL, Gradinaru V, Sunkin SM, Zeng H, Lein ES, Tasic B, Ting JT, Levi BP

Transcriptomic and morphophysiological evidence for a specialized human cortical GABAergic cell type

Nature Neuroscience
August 27, 2018

Boldog E, Bakken TE, Hodge RD, Novotny M, Aevermann BD, Baka J, Bordé S, Jennie L. Close, Diez-Fuertes F, Ding SL, Faragó N, Kocsis AK, Kovács B, Maltzer Z, McCorrison JM, Miller JA, Molnár G, Oláh G, Ozsvár A, Rózsa M, Shehata SI, Smith KA, Sunkin SM, Tran DN, Venepally P, Wall A, Puskás LG, Barzó P, Steemers FJ, Schork NJ, Scheuermann RH, Lasken RS, Lein ES, Tamás G

Genetic identification of brain cell types underlying schizophrenia

Nature Genetics
May 21, 2018

Skene NG, Bryois J, Bakken TE, Breen G, Crowley JJ, Gaspar HA, Giusti-Rodriguez P, Hodge RD, Miller JA, Muñoz-Manchado A, O'Donovan MC, Owen MJ, Pardiñas AF, Ryge J, Walters JTR, Linnarsson S, Lein ES, Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Sullivan PS, Hjerling-Leffler J

Single-nucleus and single-cell transcriptomes compared in matched cortical cell types

PLoS One
December 26, 2018

Bakken TE, Hodge RD, Miller JA, Yao Z, Nguyen TN, Aevermann B, Barkan E, Bertagnolli D, Casper T, Dee N, Garren E, Goldy J, Graybuck LT, Kroll M, Lasken RS, Lathia K, Parry S, Rimorin C, Scheuermann RH, Schork NJ, Shehata SI, Tieu M, Phillips JW, Bernard A, Smith KA, Zeng H, Lein ES, Tasic B

h-Channels Contribute to Divergent Intrinsic Membrane Properties of Supragranular Pyramidal Neurons in Human versus Mouse Cerebral Cortex

Neuron
November 1, 2018

Kalmbach BE, Buchin A, Long B, Close J, Nandi A, Miller JA, Bakken TE, Hodge RD, Chong P, de Frates R, Dai K, Maltzer Z, Nicovich PR, Keene CD, Silbergeld DL, Gwinn RP, Cobbs C, Ko AL, Ojemann JG, Koch C, Anastassiou CA, Lein ES, Ting JT

Conditional ablation of Tbr2 results in abnormal development of the olfactory bulbs and subventricular zone-rostral migratory stream

Developmental Dynamics
March 2014

Kahoud RJ, Elsen GE, Hevner RF, Hodge RD

Dynamic interactions between intermediate neurogenic progenitors and radial glia in embryonic mouse neocortex: potential role in Dll1-Notch signaling

Journal of Neuroscience
May 22, 2013

Nelson BR, Hodge RD, Bedogni F, Hevner RF

The protomap is propagated to cortical plate neurons through an Eomes-dependent intermediate map

PNAS
March 5, 2013

Elsen GE, Hodge RD, Bedogni F, Daza RA, Nelson BR, Shiba N, Reiner SL, Hevner RF

Tbr2 expression in Cajal-Retzius cells and intermediate neuronal progenitors is required for morphogenesis of the dentate gyrus

Journal of Neuroscience
February 27, 2013

Hodge RD, Garcia AJ 3rd, Elsen GE, Nelson BR, Mussar KE, Reiner SL, Ramirez JM, Hevner RF