Cecilia B. Moens

About

Cecilia B. Moens is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington and a Member in the Division of Basic Science at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her research focuses on understanding how genes control cell-cell interactions that underlie the development and regeneration of neural circuits in the embryonic brain. Specifically, she investigates mechanisms of neural topographic map formation in the context of the vagus nerve, which facilitates neuronal communication between visceral organs and the brain, as well as other axon guidance events. Her laboratory utilizes the transparent zebrafish embryo as a model system, taking advantage of its accessibility to genetic manipulation and high-resolution imaging of individual neurons, their axons, and activity in vivo. Cecilia Moens received her B.Sc. in Biology from York University in Toronto, Canada, in 1987, and her Ph.D. in Medical and Molecular Genetics from the University of Toronto in 1993. She completed post-doctoral training with Charles Kimmel at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon before joining the faculty at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1998.

Research topics

• Cell biology
• Biology
• Genetics
• Neuroscience
• Immunology
• Anatomy
• Microbiology
• Computational biology
• Evolutionary biology

Selected publications

• Retinoic Acid Organizes the Zebrafish Vagus Motor Topographic Map via Spatiotemporal Coordination of Hgf/Met Signaling

  Developmental Cell · 2020 · 33 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Microtubules are required for the maintenance of planar cell polarity in monociliated floorplate cells

  Developmental Biology · 2019-04-25 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Retinoic acid organizes the vagus motor topographic map via spatiotemporal regulation of Hgf/Met signaling

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2019-10-31 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY The topographic map, in which the positions of neuron cell bodies correspond with the positions of their synaptic targets, is a major organizational motif in the nervous system. To understand how topographic axon targeting is controlled during development, we examine the mechanism underlying topographic innervation of the pharyngeal arches by the vagus motor nerve in zebrafish. We reveal that Retinoic Acid organizes the topographic map by specifying anterior-posterior identity in post-mi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD037909

  NIH · $2.7M · 2012

• Discovery of sensorimotor connectivity mechanisms in a continuous topographic map

  NIH · $493k · 2022–2025

• In vivo cell-cell interactions regulating melanoma metastatic cell behaviors

  NIH · $421k · 2015–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Luyuan Pan

  Institute of Hydrobiology

  50 shared

• Hung‐Hsiang Yu

  Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica

  36 shared

• P. Taylur

  26 shared

• Janet Rossant

  Hospital for Sick Children

  23 shared

• Holly A. Rikhof

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  23 shared

• Bruce W. Draper

  University of California, Davis

  22 shared

• Hilary A. Kemp

  University of Alberta

  21 shared

• Rafael E. Hernandez

  Infectious Disease Research Institute

  20 shared

Education

• B.S.

  York University

  1987

• Ph.D., Medical and Molecular Genetics

  University of Toronto

  1993

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Julie Therioth-89
• Daniel E. Schindlerh-78
• Carl Bergstromh-74