Research in the Vernon lab in relation to the Neuroscience Cluster of the Functional Genomics initiative at King’s College London focuses on Microglia and their pathological roles in psychiatric and neurological disorders: Using microglia and neurons differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC), we seek to understand how genetic risk for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders impacts on human microglia form and function. Specifically, we study rare highly penetrant copy number variants (e.g., 22q11.2 deletion, NRXN1 deletion) and disease associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (e.g., P522R in PLCG2) using CRISPR/Cas9 engineering. To facilitate this, we have developed models of neuron-microglia and microglia-synapse interactions in the context of brain development and disease. This includes 2D co-cultures and 3D organoid systems, for which we have also developed optical clearing and light sheet imaging methods to visualise neurodevelopmental processes in 3D.
