Simona Sarafinovska

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Joseph D. Dougherty, PhD

Undergraduate university: Columbia University, 2018

Enrollment year: 2018

Research summary
Characterizing gene regulatory elements underlying social learning in adolescent mice

In the lab of Dr. Joseph Dougherty, within the Departments of Genetics and Psychiatry, we focus on understanding the genetics and genomics of behavior in health and disease. My goal over the next years will be to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying social learning in a mouse model, with the eventual aim of understanding development resilience to early-life and adolescent social stressors. Currently, I am working on pushing the envelope on our novel Calling Card assay, which allows in vivo recording of DNA-transcription factor binding for retroactive analysis. Hopefully, our findings can be employed to better understand what drives vulnerability to diseases of social development and, even broader, how earlier-life environment is biologically embedded leading to poor later-life outcomes.

;t and, even broader, how earlier-life environment is biologically embedded leading to poor later-life outcomes.

Graduate publications
Maloney SE, Sarafinovska S, Weichselbaum C, McCullough KB, Swift RG, Liu Y, Dougherty JD. 2023 A comprehensive assay of social motivation reveals sex-specific roles of autism-associated genes and oxytocin. Cell Rep Methods, 3(6):100504. PMCID: PMC10326376

Yen A, Mateusiak C, Sarafinovska S, Gachechiladze MA, Guo J, Chen X, Moudgil A, Cammack AJ, Hoisington-Lopez J, Crosby M, Brent MR, Mitra RD, Dougherty JD. 2023 Calling Cards: A Customizable Platform to Longitudinally Record Protein-DNA Interactions Over Time in Cells and Tissues. Curr Protoc, 3(9)::e883. PMCID: PMC10627244

Lagunas T Jr, Plassmeyer SP, Fischer AD, Friedman RZ, Rieger MA, Selmanovic D, Sarafinovska S, Sol YK, Kasper MJ, Fass SB, Aguilar Lucero AF, An JY, Sanders SJ, Cohen BA, Dougherty JD. 2023 A Cre-dependent massively parallel reporter assay allows for cell-type specific assessment of the functional effects of non-coding elements in vivo. Commun Biol, 6(1):1151. PMCID: PMC10641075

Minakova E, Sarafinovska S, Mikati MO, Barclay KM, McCullough KB, Dougherty JD, Al-Hasani R, Maloney SE. 2021 Ontogenetic Oxycodone Exposure Affects Early Life Communicative Behaviors, Sensorimotor Reflexes, and Weight Trajectory in Mice. Front Behav Neurosci, 15():615798. PMCID: PMC7937712