Professor Alicia Hidalgo

Supervisor Details

Contact Details

School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham

Scientific Background

Research Interests

Our lab aims to understand how the nervous system is formed, and how it works. Structure and function come together in the course of development, and influence each other throughout life, endowing the nervous system with plasticity. As the animal grows and nervous system volume and cell number increase, the two cell types in the nervous system - neurons and glial cells - make adjustments that modify migration patterns, axonal trajectories, cell division and cell survival. These plastic adjustments result in the robust, reproducible formation of the nervous system across individuals, and over evolutionary time. Conversely, these cell interactions fail in diseases of the nervous system and brain (e.g. neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders and brain tumours) and upon injury (e.g. upon spinal cord injury and stroke).

We use the fruit-fly Drosophila because it is a very powerful model organism to address questions swiftly, in vivo and with single cell resolution. Our approach combines genetics, molecular biology, cell culture, computational analysis and in vivo confocal microscopy in fixed specimens and in time-lapse. We collaborate with biochemists (Prof. N.J. Gay, Cambridge), electrophysiologists (Dr I. Robinson, Plymouth) and experts using mice and rats as model organisms (Prof. A. Logan, IBR Birmingham and Dr F. Matsuzaki, Riken, Japan).

Research Groups

Hidalgo Lab

Birmingham Fly Facility

Centre for Neurogenetics

Structural and Molecular Cell Biology

Supervision Style

In three words or phrases: Goal-oriented, organised, collaborative

Provision of Training

I will be your direct supervisor, but you will be trained on different techniques and methods by different people in my team, as well as myself.

As you progress, you might also need to learn and use techniques which could be new and unfamiliar to our lab. In these cases, we will find advice from others and from publications. It’s good not to be scared of learning new things.

Progression Monitoring and Management

I meet with each of my PhD students once a week to discuss progress. We set out expectations of what could and should be achieved on a weekly and monthly basis, we discuss research questions and aims, hypotheses, how to test them, experimental design and data quality. If problems emerge, we discuss a plan of action together.

We also have group meetings once a week, at which each team member presents a progress report, we discuss literature and findings, etc.

Communication

I lead an open, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic team, in which people talk, give opinions and discuss. We meet up, for lunch, go out, have team activities together. I prefer face-to-face conversations, we also share WhatsApp and Slack channels, and of course email is also used routinely. We communicate a lot!

PhD Students can expect scheduled meetings with me:

In a group meeting

At least once a week

In year 1 of PhD study

At least once a week

In year 2 of PhD study

At least once a week

In year 1 of PhD study

At least once a fortnight, often still once a week, it varies

These meetings will be mainly face to face, and I am usually contactable for an instant response every working day. However, not necessarily all day. I divide my day in two chunks: in the morning, my door is always open, and I am available instantly. In the afternoons I close my door because I need to concentrate, and it is best not to disturb me and talk to me next morning instead.

Working Pattern

The timing of work in my lab is flexible, within reason. I do not police arrival and departure times and I expect students to manage their own time, but I also expect them to overlap with the other team members for most of the day. This is very important for training and sharing know-how.

Notice Period for Feedback

I need at least 1 week’s notice to provide feedback on written work of up to 5000 words.

Project Details

Prof Hidalgo is the supervisor on the below project:

Molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity, degeneration and regeneration

Secondary Supervisor(s): Dr Jack Rogers

University of Registration: University of Birmingham

BBSRC Research Themes:

Understanding the Rules of Life (Immunology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, Stem Cells)
Integrated Understanding of Health (Ageing, Regenerative Biology)

No longer accepting applications

Project Outline

The aim of the project is to discover and test candidate molecular mechanisms underlying structural brain plasticity, degeneration and regeneration. We aim to understand how the brain responds to environmental challenge, how it changes as we go through life, how experience shapes the brain, why does the brain degenerate as we age, how can we promote regeneration after injury. The human brain is plastic: it changes as we learn, enabling adaptation and memory, and then it degenerates as we age. The brain and spinal cord can also respond to stressors and injury. The human central nervous system (CNS) does not regenerate after injury or disease, but some animals can regenerate their CNS and this generally involves cell reprogramming, de novo neurogenesis followed by integration of new neurons into functional neural circuits.

This means that cells can ‘know’ how to re-establish cell populations and circuits. In fact, the healthy brain is kept in balance between structural plasticity and homeostasis, resulting in normal behaviour. Structural plasticity enables change as we learn and adapt to environmental change, encoding memory. Structural homeostasis constrains the brain’s ability to change, thus maintaining neural circuits stable. Exercise and learning increase structural plasticity, sleep promotes homeostasis, whilst brain diseases are linked to loss of this balance, such as brain tumours (e.g. gliomas), neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s), neuro-inflammation and psychiatric disorders (e.g. depression).

Conversely, the homeostatic mechanisms that keep the brain stable also slow down learning and prevent the brain from recovering in injury and disease. The cellular processes underlying structural CNS change include neurogenesis and gliogenesis, cell death and cell loss, cellular reprogramming, changes in cell shape (generation or loss or axons, dendrites, glial projections), synapse formation and loss, altogether leading to neural circuit modification and modification of behaviour. We will investigate how experience, stressors and injury modify cellular processes and circuits and how this modifies behaviour. The molecular mechanisms underlying structural brain change are scarcely known.

Discovering them will help answer how the brain works, how we can maintain brain health, promote regeneration after injury and treat brain disease.

Methods

We will use the fruit-fly Drosophila as a model organism, combining a wide range of techniques including: genetics, molecular cell biology including CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology and transgenesis, microscopy, including laser scanning confocal microscopy and calcium imaging in time-lapse, computational imaging approaches for analysis of images and movies, stimulating neuronal function with opto- and thermos-genetics in vivo, and recording and analysing fruit-fly behaviour.

References

Visit our lab website: https://more.bham.ac.uk/hidalgo/

Sun et al (2022 and under review) Structural circuit plasticity by a neurotrophin with a Toll modifies dopamine-dependent behaviour. BioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.04.522695

Harrison N, Connolly E, Gascón Gubieda A, Yang Z, Altenhein B, Losada-Perez M, Moreira M, Hidalgo A (2021) Regenerative neurogenesis is induced from glia by Ia-2 driven neuron-glia communication. eLife10:e58756 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58756

Li G and Hidalgo A (2020) Adult neurogenesis in the Drosophila brain: the evidence and the void. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 21(18), 6653

Guiyi Li and Alicia Hidalgo (2021) The Toll route to structural brain plasticity. Frontiers in Physiology. Frontiers in Physiology DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2021.679766

Li G, Forero MG, Wentzell JS, Durmus I, Wolf R, Anthoney NC, Parker M, Jiang R, Hasenauer J, Strausfeld NJ, Heisenberg M, Hidalgo A (2020) A Toll-receptor map underlies structural brain plasticity eLife, 9: e52743 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.52743
eLife Digest article 17 March 2020 dedicated to our paper: “How experience shapes the brain” https://elifesciences.org/digests/52743/how-experience-shapes-the-brain

Losada-Perez M, Harrison N, Hidalgo A. (2016) Molecular mechanism of central nervous system repair by the Drosophila NG2 homologue kon-tiki. Journal of Cell Biology 214, 587

Kato, Forero and Hidalgo (2011) The glial regenerative response to CNS injury is enabled by Pros-Notch ad Pros-NFkB feed-back. PLoS Biology 9, e1001133

Techniques

Molecular biology: cloning, PCR, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.

Genetics: transgenesis, generation of mutants, knock-outs and knock-ins, reporter lines to visualise cells eg with GFP, etc.

Cell biology and Microscopy: laser scanning confocal microscopy, epi-fluorescence microscopy, time-lapse including calcium imaging using GcAMP reporters

Opto and thermogenetics to manipulate neuronal activity: increase or inhibit neuronal activity and see the consequences with cell biology, GcAMP imaging

Behaviour: locomotion, learning and memory, custom-made set ups, etc.