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Gabriel Silva, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Secondary Appointments: Departments of Bioengineering and Ophthalmology
UCSD Jacobs Retina Center, 0946
9415 Campus Point Drive
office tel: 858.822.4591
lab tel: 822.534.2834
Fax: 858.534.7985
Email: gsilva@ucsd.edu
Lab Website: http://www.silva.ucsd.edu/ |
| The broad theme of our research program is the investigation of
intercellular signaling in the central nervous system (CNS) and in
particular in the neural sensory retina (which is an extension of the brain
itself) and more recently the hippocampus and claustrum (due to their roles
in learning and memory) under physiologically normal conditions and
following disease, integrated across spatial scales, from individual cells
to large neural cell networks. We are interested in investigating how the
molecular and cellular processes that underlie cell functions and signaling
in individual neural cells, which are usually very stereotyped and
ubiquitous processes, give rise to the information richness and complexity
that characterizes the CNS. Along the same theme, we are interested in how
information representation and propagation by neural circuits breakdown in
specific disease states as molecular and cellular processes are compromised.
This work builds on our related expertise on neural cell signaling, neural
stem cells, and neuroregeneration. We have a particular interest in glial
neurobiology, specifically how neural glial cell signaling via calcium
mediated processes contributes to the modulation of neuronal signaling and
how it contributes to neuronal pathophysiology. Neural macroglial cells, in
particular astrocytes, directly participate in and modulate neuronal
information processing and metabolic changes in the CNS, although many of
the molecular and cellular details and most of the systems level details by
which they do this are not known. Clinically, we are interested in the
pathophysiology of and treating photoreceptor degeneration in the neural
sensory retina, in particular focusing on age related macular degeneration
and the development of a micro-nano drug delivery system to treat this and
related disorders. From a more engineering perspective, we also have a very
strong interest in reverse engineering the CNS so that we can then engineer
and build computational models in silico that operate (e.g. "think") using
the strategies of the mammalian brain and nervous system. We approach these
research objectives by combining molecular and cellular neurobiology and
imaging with engineering and computationally intensive approaches including
mathematical and computer modeling and nanotechnology, the latter being an
emerging area we have unique expertise in. In all cases, when needed we
develop and optimize different technologies, both experimental and
computational, in order to allow us to address our specific hypotheses and
research aims. This represents the main philosophical approach to our lab,
we develop and engineer technologies as needed by the pursuit of the
biological questions we hope to answer. It is the basic science and
clinical questions of interest that drive our engineering objectives; which
in turn are used to address hypothesis questions in a systematic and
quantitatively rigorous way. Additional details about our research,
including free full text PDF links to our publications can be found on our
lab web site at www.silva.ucsd.edu |
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C MacDonald, D Yu, Buibas, M. and GA Silva (2008) Diffusion modeling of ATP
signaling suggests a partially regenerative mechanism underlies astrocyte
intercellular calcium waves. Frontiers in Neuroengineering 1:1-13.
S Pathak, MC Davidson, and GA Silva (2007) Characterization of the
functional binding properties of antibody conjugated quantum dots. Nano
Letters 7:1839-1845.
GA Silva (2006) Neuroscience Nanotechnology: Progress, challenges, and opportunities. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7:65-74.
S Pathak, E Cao, MC Davidson, S Jin, and GA Silva (2006) Quantum dot
applications in neuroscience: New tools for probing neurons and glia.
Journal of Neuroscience . 26:1893-1895.303:1352-1355.
GA Silva, C Czeisler, KL Niece, E Beniash, D Harrington, JA Kessler, and SI
Stupp (2004) Selective differentiation of neural progenitor cells by
high-density epitope nanofibers. Science 303:1352-1355.
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