Rutgers University
Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience
D251 Nelson Labs,
604 Allison Road,
Piscataway, NJ  08854

(732) 445-1783
FAX: (732) 445-2063

rhart@rci.rutgers.edu

Web page

Spinal cord injury and repair
Functional genomics
Stem cells

• Microarray
• Laser capture microsopy

Spinal cord injury begins with a traumatic contusion which destroys cells, but continues with the inflammation of surviving tissues leading to secondary cell death. We used functional genomics to characterize the cellular changes occurring during this critical period in hopes of intervening to rescue function. Recent work focuses on gene expression in selected regenerating brain neurons after spinal cord injury. We label individual neurons with retrograde dyes and then use laser capture microscopy to recover injured cells with axons extending distal to the injury site. Following amplification and microarray assays, individual mRNAs selective for regenerating neurons can be identified. We also study the role of T cells in exacerbation of spinal cord injury. Other new projects focus on microRNAs in stem cells and regenerating neurons. Many of these projects are ongoing collaborations with spinal cord research groups from throughout the world. One component of my group also designs databases for systematic mining of all microarray and animal data. Our long-term goal is to accelerate the pace of spinal cord injury research through worldwide collaboration.

For complete list: PubMed

Jones, T.B, Hart, R.P. andPopovich, P.G. (2005) Molecular control of physiological and pathological T-cell recruitment after mouse spinal cord injury. J. Neurosci. 25: 6576-6583.

Shaked, I., Butovsky, O., Gersner, R., Xiao, X., Hart, R.P.and Schwartz, M. (2005) Protective autoimmunity: Interferon-gamma enables microglia to remove glutamate without evoking inflammatory mediators. J. Neurochem. 92: 997-1009

Pan, J.Z., Jörnsten, R. and Hart, R.P. (2004) Screening anti-inflammatory compounds in injured spinal cord with microarrays: A comparison of bioinformatics analysis approaches. Physiological Genomics, 17: 201-214.

Sullivan, P.G, Rabchevsky, A.G., Keller, J.N., Lovell, M., Sodhi, A.,Hart, R.P. and Scheff, S.W. (2004) Intrinsic Differences in Brain and Spinal Cord Mitochondria: Implication for Therapeutic Interventions. J. .Comp. Neurol. 474:524-534.

Carmel, J.B., Kakinohana, O., Mestril, R., Young, W., Marsala, M. and Hart, R.P. (2004) Mediators of Ischemic Preconditioning Identified By Microarray Analysis of Rat Spinal Cord. Exp. Neurol. 185: 81-96