Background pattern of a brain with neural connections

Ashley Seifert

Co-PI (Core Leadership)

University of Kentucky

Ashley Seifert, MSc, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Kentucky. His research uses a multi-species approach to identify cellular and molecular features that direct injured tissue to naturally regenerate. Among these species, his lab has developed spiny mice as a model to study complex tissue regeneration and discover cytoprotective mechanisms that protect tissues and organs from fibrosis. His work has uncovered novel, stress-resistant mechanisms in adult fibroblasts and highlighted how macrophage populations direct regenerative healing.

Dr. Seifert earned an AB in biology from Bowdoin College, an MSc from the University of Florida (UF) studying air-breathing physiology in lungfish, and his PhD in Professor Cohn’s lab at UF studying anogenital development in mammals. He completed postdoctoral training in regenerative biology with Professor Maden before starting his own lab at the University of Kentucky in 2013. Dr. Seifert has been a visiting professor at the University of Nairobi since 2010.

Teams

Gradinaru

Themes

Circuitry and Brain-Body Interactions

Recent ASAP Preprints & Published Papers

Parkinson’s disease modeling in regenerative spiny mice (Acomys dimidiatus) captures key disease-relevant behavioral, histological, and molecular signatures

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a multifactorial neurodegenerative disorder that has been modeled extensively in animals, primarily rodents but also non-human primates and non-mammalian organisms. However, no single animal model fully recapitulates the hallmarks of PD pathology. Here, we extend this work by modeling PD for the first time in the…