Ms Ellen Wall

University position

PhD student
Supervised by Prof. Allan Herbison

Departments

Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Email

egw32@cam.ac.uk

Research Themes

Systems and Computational Neuroscience

Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

The Cambridge Neuroscience Community

Interests

The hypothalamus is a structure in the brain which is responsible for the regulation of vital physiological systems, the reproductive system being one of these. It does this by releasing gonadotrophin releasing hormone (GnRH) in a pulsatile manner which then acts on the anterior pituitary to result in the pulsatile release of gonadotropins, luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). A group of kisspeptin neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus are termed ‘the GnRH pulse generator’ as they are responsible for driving the pulsatile release of GnRH and subsequently LH and FSH. These gonadotropins regulate the release of sex hormones progesterone and estrogen in females. These, in turn, relay back to the hypothalamus to stimulate or inhibit their own release, a process known as positive and negative feedback, respectively. My project will aim to investigate how progesterone displays its negative feedback actions on the GnRH pulse generator.

Research Focus

Keywords

Neuroendocrinology

Clinical conditions

Hormonal disorders

Impaired negative feedback onto the hypothalamus may underlie common infertility disorders such as polycystic ovarian syndrome. Therefore, elucidating the mechanisms by which progesterone negatively feeds back to the pulse generator in the hypothalamus may provide a platform for the development of new therapeutic strategies in the infertility clinic.

Equipment

Calcium imaging

Confocal microscopy

Enzyme assays

GCaMP fibre photometry. CRISPR-Cas9

Immunohistochemistry

Collaborators

No collaborators listed

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