Estuardo Robles

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

Research in my laboratory is focused on understanding how the vertebrate nervous system processes visual information to generate appropriate behaviors. We study visually-responsive neurons in the larval zebrafish, a vertebrate animal model that is ideal for 1) targeted manipulation of genetically-defined neurons, 2) in vivo imaging of neuronal structure and function, and 3) quantitative analysis of visually-evoked behaviors. A major current focus of the lab is to functionally and genetically characterize retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the neurons that transmit visual information from the retina to the brain. Future studies will be aimed at defining the structural and functional properties of visual neurons in the brain, with the ultimate goal of discovering fundamental principles underlying the organization of visual circuits. The experimental tools that we use include genetic methods to label specific neuron types, confocal microscopy to analyze neuronal morphology, and multiphoton microscopy to monitor visually-evoked neuronal activity.

Selected Publications:

Robles E§, Laurell E, Baier H (2014). The retinal projectome reveals brain area-specific visual representations generated by ganglion cell diversity. Current Biology 24(18):2085-96.
 
Robles E§, Filosa A, Baier H (2013). Precise lamination of retinal axons generates multiple parallel input pathways in the tectum. J Neurosci. 33:5027-39.
 
Myers JP*, Robles E*, Ducharme-Smith A, Gómez TM (2012). Focal adhesion kinase modulates Cdc42 activity downstream of positive and negative guidance cues. J. Cell Sci. 125:2918-29.
 
Xiao T, Staub W, Robles E, Gosse NJ, Cole GJ, Baier H (2011). Assembly of lamina-specific neuronal connections by slit bound to type IV collagen. Cell 146(1):164-76.
 
Robles E§, Smith SJ, Baier H (2011). Characterization of genetically targeted neuron types in the zebrafish optic tectum. Front Neural Circuits 5:1.
 
Del Bene F, Wyart C, Robles E, Tran A, Looger L, Scott EK, Isacoff EY, Baier H (2010).
Filtering of visual information in the tectum by an identified neural circuit.
Science 330(6004):669-73.