Professor Allan Herbison

We are focused upon understanding the properties and functioning of the key neural populations controlling fertility in mammals; the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons and the kisspeptin neurons. Together, these cells generate the “pulse” and “surge” patterns of hormone secretion that are responsible for the initiation of puberty and the subsequent maintenance of reproductive function in adult males and females.

Our key questions are -

• How does this neural circuitry produce the abrupt episodes of GnRH secretion that generate pules of reproductive hormone secretion?
• How can this same circuitry generate a completely different “surge” pattern of GnRH secretion at the mid-point of the female cycle to trigger ovulation?
• How do steroids such as estrogen and progesterone modulate this neural circuitry?
• What goes wrong in this neural circuitry in conditions of infertility such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)?

Studies are undertaken in a variety of genetically-modified mouse models using tissue clearing and expansion microscopy, single cell electrophysiology and calcium imaging in acute brain slices in vitro, RNAseq gene profiling, in vivo imaging of the activity of selected neurons and neural populations in freely-behaving mice, and in vivo CRISPR-based gene editing.

Funding

BBSRC

Francis Ortiz Garcia (Senior Research Technician)
Paul Morris (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Szilvia Vas (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Miguel Ruiz Cruz (Postdoctoral Fellow)