Dr. Giulia Quattrocolo
Associate Professor Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience
Postdoctoral Fellow Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and New York University
PhD Northwestern University
When Dr. Giulia Quattrocolo was an undergraduate at the University of Pavia in Italy, her physiology professor gave a lecture on the Pacinian corpuscle, a sensory receptor important for sensing mechanical vibration and pressure. Giulia was hooked; she thought it was astonishing that these specialized structures could turn cell membrane deformation into a sensory signal by interfacing with nerve terminals embedded at their center. After this lecture, Giulia went home and looked through all of her textbooks for any mentions of neurons, determined to learn everything she could about these incredible cells. Giulia has preserved her love of neurons ever since; now as an Associate Professor at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Giulia and her lab study the development of the hippocampal circuitry and its role in behavior.
Before Giulia discovered her interest in neuroscience, Giulia attended a scientific high school where she learned about genetics and molecular biology. While she was not exposed to neuroscience in school, she did discover her love for biology early. She entered the University of Pavia intending to study genetics. However, after she began learning about neurophysiology and the unique attributes of neurons, she decided to switch her focus to neuroscience.
Her love for neuroscience persisted throughout her undergraduate degree and she decided to pursue a master’s in neurobiology afterwards at the same university. For her master’s, she joined the lab of Dr. Jacopo Magistretti, where she studied different types of sodium currents in hippocampal neurons. As a side project, Giulia also started to study when during development the different types of sodium currents start to be expressed. This sparked an interest in neurodevelopment, a passion she has maintained enthusiasm for throughout her entire career.
As Giulia was wrapping up her master’s, she decided to apply for PhD programs in the United States to pursue her interest in neurodevelopment, specifically focusing on circuit organization. However, getting into graduate school in the US was logistically complicated for Giulia. As an international student, Giulia had to complete the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam in addition to the GRE and grad school applications while still finishing her master’s. Compounding this, there weren’t many resources in Italy for applying to graduate school in the US, and, at the time, it was challenging to find information on this topic on the internet. Therefore, Giulia took advantage of a trip to New York with her sister and friends. She made a stop at a Barnes and Noble, where she bought guides to get into grad school in the US.
These guides helped Giulia organize her application, and she was delighted to be accepted into Northwestern’s Neuroscience program. She moved to Chicago, without having been there before, the summer after finishing her master’s. Luckily, Northwestern had a program in which international students could come to Chicago a month early, and they provided English and cultural classes. Through this experience, Giulia met several friends right when she came to the US, giving her a community of support.
Giulia decided to join the lab of Dr. Gianmaria Maccaferri for her PhD. For her dissertation project, Giulia mapped the circuit of Cajal-Retzius neurons in the CA1 region of the hippocampus, cells known to be important for cortical development. In the cortex, these neurons guide pyramidal cells while they are migrating and then die shortly after birth. However, in the hippocampus, these cells live much longer - suggesting they play a role in the hippocampus at a later developmental time point. Giulia performed paired recordings of Cajal-Retzius and other hippocampal neurons to determine how they communicate with one another. She confirmed that Cajal-Retzius cells release the excitatory transmitter glutamate and are in contact with pyramidal cells and interneurons in the hippocampus.
Giulia and her future husband – also a scientist – went looking for postdoc positions that would allow them to live together in the same city. They both found positions in New York City at NYU, where Giulia joined the lab of Dr. Gord Fishell. She and another postdoc studied the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that drive the maturation of interneurons in the cortex and hippocampus of mice. They took interneurons from postnatal days 0 and 1 and transplanted them into the opposite region (cortical origin interneurons were transplanted into the hippocampus and vice versa). Then they looked at how well the interneurons survived in their new environment. Overall, they found that the cortex was more “welcoming” than the hippocampus to these foreign interneurons.
She also continued her work from her PhD studying Cajal-Retzius cells. She attempted to ablate the Cajal-Retzius cells in the postnatal hippocampus to see what their role was in this brain region. However, while she was troubleshooting this experiment, her PI decided to move the lab to Harvard. Unfortunately, it was not in her husband’s best interest to move to Boston for his career, and Giulia was reaching the time where she would have to apply for a green card - something she wasn’t interested in doing. Giulia and her husband decided to see this transition period as an opportunity to move back to Europe, which they had always intended to do. She emailed Dr. Edvard Moser at the Kavli Institute in Norway to see if she could continue her project on Cajal-Retzius cells in his lab, and he said yes.
Shortly after Giulia settled into her new position, she had a child, which was followed shortly by the Covid-19 pandemic. Although she was forced to pause that project, a postdoc in her own lab has picked it up and is finding interesting circuit and behavioral consequences of Cajal-Retzius depletion in the hippocampus.
While Giulia was in the Moser lab, she and her husband both began looking for faculty positions. They received offers from two universities in Europe, one of which was the institute they were postdocs at (the Kavli Institute in Norway). Although it was challenging to pick between the two, they decided to stay at the Kavli Institute, which presented a number of advantages for Giulia’s personal life and her science. Her lab is continuing to work on the Cajal-Retzius cells in the hippocampus, in addition to studying how different cell types in the hippocampus come together to form circuits during development. They are also looking at differences in growth cones in the hippocampus across development to determine how the proteins found at these structures differ as the growth cones switch from exploring the environment, to targeting a specific synapse and forming a connection. Giulia enjoys being a mentor and writing grants, making her well suited for her job as a PI.
In her spare time, Giulia likes to read about medieval history; in fact she considered studying it, but she didn’t like Latin. Luckily, she was not deterred from neuroscience by the Latin roots of many scientific terms (her first neuroscience love, the Pacinian “corpuscle”, is borrowed from Latin). In a way, Giulia now studies the developmental history of the hippocampus, allowing her to mix her love of neuroscience and history, and paving the way for her beautiful scientific stories about the way our hippocampus is shaped over the course of our lifetime.
Find out more about Giulia and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Margarida’s full interview with Giulia on April 26, 2024 below!
