I am Dr. Melissa Cooper, a postdoctoral fellow and Leon Levy Neuroscience Fellow at NYU Langone Health.
My work characterizes the astrocyte connectome in morphological scope and molecular function.
A complete list of my publications lives here.
A somatosensory astrocytic network.
Astrocytes in a visual cortex astrocytic network connected through corpus callosum.
Astrocytes in a visual cortex astrocytic network connected through corpus callosum.
A motor cortex astrocytic network.
Retinal astrocytes (cyan), their gap junctions (yellow), and all retinal nuclei (magenta).
Astrocytes in the frontal cortex of a iDISCO+ cleared mouse brain. 200um of depth, coded by color and projected onto a single image.
The visual projection from one eye (red) within an intact, cleared brain.
The visual projection from one eye (red) within an intact, cleared brain.
Ipsilateral and contralateral visual projections segmented for quantification.
Expansion microscopy on primary astrocytic culture enlarges cells to about half a millimeter across, enabling imaging of individual gap junctions.
Astrocytes in the brain reacting to retinal neurodegeneration.
Immunopanned primary cortical astrocytes, cultured in serum-free conditions.
Immunopanned astrocytes forming gap junctions (magenta).
PET revealing resource distribution between the two eyes after neurodegenerative insult
PET and CT demonstrating a lack of metabolic resource transfer after astrocyte-specific connexin 43 knockout
Co-culture of primary astrocytes and microglia
Clearing a brain from an astrocyte marker mouse enabled visualization of a new astrocyte subtype on the brain's surface.
Highlighted Publications
Defining the molecular identity and morphology of glia limitans superficialis astrocytes in mouse and human
Tissue clearing and single-cell sequencing revealed a highly specialized astrocyte subtype on the surface of the brain.
Redistribution of metabolic resources through astrocyte networks mitigates neurodegenerative stress
Revealed long-distance metabolic redistribution through astrocytes during neurodegeneration that rescued neuronal structure and function; examined the functional impacts of resource donation on both degenerating and donating tissue.
Astrocyte remodeling without gliosis precedes optic nerve axonopathy
Quantified astrocyte process and network morphological reorganization occurring early in a genetic model of neurodegeneration.
Postdoctoral Fellow (NYU Langone Health)
Leon Levy Fellow in Neuroscience
Scientist-In-Residence, The New York Academy of Sciences
Ph.D. in Neuroscience
(Vanderbilt University, Class of 2019)
B.S. in Biological Sciences, with Honors, and in Psychology; Minors in Biochemistry and in Chemistry
(Florida State University, Class of 2014)