The research in the Ehlers Lab is focused at the interface of cell biology and neural circuit plasticity.  Our work is directed at understanding the organelles and mechanisms for protein trafficking and turnover in dendrites, and the relationship to synapse formation and function. The complex morphology of the neuron, with its elaborately branched dendrites onto which impinge hundreds to thousands of individual synapses, requires that highly specialized mechanisms exist for localizing, maintaining, and removing proteins at the synapse.  Such mechanisms are crucial for the initial establishment of postsynaptic specializations during synaptogenesis, and for activity-dependent changes in synaptic strength that underlie experience-dependent plasticity. 

Our work on the endocytic machinery of dendritic spines, the trafficking and regulation of glutamate receptors, and plasticity-induced remodeling of the postsynaptic membrane has provided new insight into compartmentalized membrane trafficking and signaling at synapses.  More recently, we have begun to examine the submicron organization of signaling complexes at the synapse as a basis for molecular information storage. 

Using a combination of cutting-edge molecular techniques, high resolution live cell imaging, mouse genetics, and electrophysiology, we are actively pursuing three major lines of ongoing research in the lab.  First, we are using fluorescence and single molecule imaging together with genetic inactivation of single synapses to examine the nanoarchitecture and submicron surface mobility of receptors at glutamatergic synapses.  Second, we are developing and employing mouse genetic models for targeted electrical activation of genetically defined subsets of neurons.  With these models, we are probing the functional organization and plasticity of complex circuits including the mammalian olfactory system.  Third, we are working to determine how dendritic endosomes and localized endosomal membrane trafficking in spines controls the functional and structural plasticity of glutamatergic synapses during cellular paradigms of learning and memory.