
Associate Professor
Neurology
Alex Pollen, PhD studies the genomic basis for evolutionary specializations of the human brain with a focus on cortical development.
Publications
CellBouncer, A Unified Toolkit for Single-Cell Demultiplexing and Ambient RNA Analysis, Reveals Hominid Mitochondrial Incompatibilities.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Editorial overview: Peering into our history through a genetic lens: How advances in genetics are changing our understanding of human evolution.
Current opinion in genetics & development
Implementation and validation of single-cell genomics experiments in neuroscience.
Nature neuroscience
Mapping cis- and trans-regulatory target genes of human-specific deletions.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Interspecies Organoids Reveal Human-Specific Molecular Features of Dopaminergic Neuron Development and Vulnerability.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Conservation, alteration, and redistribution of mammalian striatal interneurons.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Massively parallel characterization of regulatory elements in the developing human cortex.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Thalamocortical organoids enable in vitro modeling of 22q11.2 microdeletion associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Cell stem cell
Human neuronal maturation comes of age: cellular mechanisms and species differences.
Nature reviews. Neuroscience
Three-dimensional genome rewiring in loci with human accelerated regions.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Genetic architecture of human brain evolution.
Current opinion in neurobiology
Comparative landscape of genetic dependencies in human and chimpanzee stem cells.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Massively parallel characterization of psychiatric disorder-associated and cell-type-specific regulatory elements in the developing human cortex.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Human-specific genetics: new tools to explore the molecular and cellular basis of human evolution.
Nature reviews. Genetics
IoT cloud laboratory: Internet of Things architecture for cellular biology.
Internet of things (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Tropism of SARS-CoV-2 for human cortical astrocytes.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Rethinking nomenclature for interspecies cell fusions.
Nature reviews. Genetics
UCSC Cell Browser: visualize your single-cell data.
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)
Light-weight electrophysiology hardware and software platform for cloud-based neural recording experiments.
Journal of neural engineering
Picroscope: low-cost system for simultaneous longitudinal biological imaging.
Communications biology
Distinct nuclear compartment-associated genome architecture in the developing mammalian brain.
Nature neuroscience
Tropism of SARS-CoV-2 for Developing Human Cortical Astrocytes.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
Recurrent inversion toggling and great ape genome evolution.
Nature genetics
Human-specific tandem repeat expansion and differential gene expression during primate evolution.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Paired involvement of human-specific Olduvai domains and NOTCH2NL genes in human brain evolution.
Human genetics
Multimodal Single-Cell Analysis Reveals Physiological Maturation in the Developing Human Neocortex.
Neuron
Regulation of cell-type-specific transcriptomes by microRNA networks during human brain development.
Nature neuroscience
Identification of cell types in a mouse brain single-cell atlas using low sampling coverage.
BMC biology
Postmitotic Fate Refinement in the Subplate.
Cell stem cell
High-resolution comparative analysis of great ape genomes.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Spatiotemporal gene expression trajectories reveal developmental hierarchies of the human cortex.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
Human iPSC-Derived Cerebral Organoids Model Cellular Features of Lissencephaly and Reveal Prolonged Mitosis of Outer Radial Glia.
Cell stem cell
Zika virus cell tropism in the developing human brain and inhibition by azithromycin.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Single-cell sequencing maps gene expression to mutational phylogenies in PDGF- and EGF-driven gliomas.
Molecular systems biology
SCell: integrated analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data.
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)
Expression Analysis Highlights AXL as a Candidate Zika Virus Entry Receptor in Neural Stem Cells.
Cell stem cell
Low-coverage single-cell mRNA sequencing reveals cellular heterogeneity and activated signaling pathways in developing cerebral cortex.
Nature biotechnology
How unique is the human neocortex?
Development (Cambridge, England)
Interspecific profiling of gene expression informed by comparative genomic hybridization: A review and a novel approach in African cichlid fishes.
Integrative and comparative biology
Beyond neuroanatomy: novel approaches to studying brain evolution.
Brain, behavior and evolution
Comparative aspects of cortical neurogenesis in vertebrates.
Journal of anatomy
Environmental complexity and social organization sculpt the brain in Lake Tanganyikan cichlid fish.
Brain, behavior and evolution