Jane Johnson

Jane Johnson, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, holding the Shirley and William S. McIntyre Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience. Her research focuses on neural development, particularly the transition from neural stem cells to differentiated neurons and glia. She utilizes bHLH transcription factors to study mechanisms regulating neural progenitor maintenance and neuronal diversity, with implications for stem cell biology and cancer.

Education: B.S. in Chemistry (1983), Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1988), both from the University of Washington. Postdoctoral research with Dr. David Anderson at Caltech led to discoveries about ASCL1 (MASH1) in neural development.

Research Interests:

• Role of bHLH transcription factors in neural development
• Regulation of neural progenitor cell differentiation
• Impact of transcription factors on cancer (e.g., neuroendocrine tumors)
• Epigenetic control of neuronal subtype specification

Lab Members: Includes postdoctoral researchers (e.g., Morgan Ullrich), research staff (Lydia Flores, Vishal Kandagatla), and students (Madison Martinez, Kathia Rodarte).

Awards: Shirley and William S. McIntyre Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience.

Key Contributions: Defined roles of ASCL1 in spinal cord development and cancer, identified enhancer sequences for neural genes, and pioneered ChIP-seq/RNA-seq approaches to study transcriptional networks.