Hongkui Zeng is the Director of the

Allen Institute for Brain Science The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a division of the Allen Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, that focuses on bioscience research. Founded in 2003, it is dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. Wit ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, where she leads the creation of

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

datasets and tools to accelerate

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

discovery. In 2011-2014 Zeng led the team that created the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas, which indicates which regions of the

mouse brain A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

are connected to which other regions. Since then, she has led the creation of atlases of

neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

al cell types in the brain of humans and mice.

Biography

Zeng received her Ph.D. in molecular and cell

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

from

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

, in the laboratory of

Michael Rosbash Michael Morris Rosbash (born March 7, 1944) is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash's research group cloned th ...

, where she studied the

molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms that are held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions that satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, ...

mechanisms of the

circadian clock A circadian clock, or circadian oscillator, also known as one’s internal alarm clock is a biochemical oscillator that cycles with a stable phase and is synchronized with solar time. Such a clock's ''in vivo'' period is necessarily almost exact ...

in fruit flies. Then as a postdoctoral fellow at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, in the laboratory of

Susumu Tonegawa is a Japanese scientist who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of V(D)J recombination, the genetic mechanism which produces antibody diversity. Although he won the Nobel Prize for his w ...

she studied the molecular and synaptic mechanisms underlying

hippocampus The hippocampus (: hippocampi; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , 'seahorse'), also hippocampus proper, is a major component of the brain of humans and many other vertebrates. In the human brain the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, and the ...

-dependent

plasticity Plasticity may refer to: Science * Plasticity (physics), in engineering and physics, the propensity of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation under load * Behavioral plasticity, change in an organism's behavior in response to exposur ...

and

learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, non-human animals, and ...

. She joined the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2006. At the Allen Institute, Zeng led the team that created the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas, which indicates which regions of the

are connected to which other regions. The atlas was published in 2014. It was obtained by injecting the brains of living mice with

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...

es carrying the

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

for the glowing marker green fluorescence protein (GFP). The neurons at each injection site accumulate GFP along their

axon An axon (from Greek ἄξων ''áxōn'', axis) or nerve fiber (or nerve fibre: see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, spelling differences) is a long, slender cellular extensions, projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, ...

s, and so point to the other neurons to which they are connected. Zeng leads the creation of atlases of cell types in the brain of humans and mice. This work aims to have a systematic understanding of the common and unique properties for each of the brain's neural components - the different types of

; to monitor their activities during

brain function The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for special senses ...

; and to manipulate these neurons to investigate their function. To gain systematic understanding of the properties, interconnections and functions of these cell types, her team combines genetic tools with large-scale imaging and

single-cell analysis In cell biology, single-cell analysis and subcellular analysis refer to the study of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and cell–cell interactions at the level of an individual cell, as opposed to more conventional metho ...

technologies. In 2023, she earned the Pradel Research Award by the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

and was elected as a member.

References

External links

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NeuroTree
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zeng, Hongkui Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Chinese neuroscientists Chinese women neuroscientists American neuroscientists American women neuroscientists Brandeis University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Members of the National Academy of Medicine