Gene Veritas Visits Yang Lab!
The Yang lab thanks Gene Veritas (a.k.a Kenneth P. Serbin), for stopping by and presenting his story and efforts as an advocate of the Huntington’s Disease (HD) community!
Serbin has been active in the HD community since his mother’s diagnosis in 1995, alongside testing positive for the HD gene himself in 1999. In early 2005, he created the pseudonym “Gene Veritas” in order to avoid genetic discrimination, where he began his blog, “At Risk For Huntington’s Disease”. Serbin has posted over 270 articles, which focus on the disease process, social impact, and race for potential treatments of HD. In 2012, he went public with his diagnosis, publishing “Racing Against the Genetic Clock” in The Chronicle of Higher Evolution. For his work, he was named Person of the Year by the Huntington’ Disease Society of America (HDSA). In 2017, Serbin, alongside his family and other HD advocates around the world, met with Pope Francis. in Rome.
Serbin is currently a professor at the University of San Diego Department of History.
To learn more about Serbin and his work, please click on the following links below:
- “At Risk For Huntington’s Disease” Blog
- Gene Veritas Twitter and Facebook
- Publication: “Striving for a Realistic and Unapologetic View of Huntington’s Disease”
The Yang lab’s latest paper, “Uninterrupted CAG repeat drives striatum-selective transcriptinopathy and nuclear pathogenesis in human Huntingtin BAC mice” published in Neuron
Former Yang lab member, Dr. Michelle Gray, profiled as a “Scientist to Watch” in The Scientist
MORF highlighted by the BRAIN Initiative Director in the Multi-Council Working Group Meeting.
[BRAIN Initiative Multi-Council Working Group Meeting – August 2020; go to 22:00]
Collaboration between the Yang lab and MIT’s Chung lab produces award winning video for the BRAIN Initiative’s “Show Us Your Brain!” contest.
[BRAIN Initiative] [NIH Director’s Blog]
The Yang lab’s latest paper, “Elevated TREM2 gene dosage reprograms microglia responsivity and ameliorates pathological phenotypes in Alzheimer’s disease models”, published in Neuron.
[Neuron] [UCLA press release] [Alzforum] [Alzforum: 2018-a year in research]
Yang lab highlighted in David Geffen School of Medicine’s “Neuroscience Research Theme”
Dr. Yang featured in a “Friends of Semel” video:
The Yang lab’s latest paper, “N17 Modifies Mutant Huntingtin Nuclear Pathogenesis and Severity of Disease in HD BAC Transgenic Mice,” published in Neuron.
Xiao-Hong Lu’s paper, “Targeting ATM ameliorates mutant Huntingtin toxicity in cell and animal models of Huntington’s disease” featured as a Research Highlight in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
[ Research Highlight in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery]
NINDS Director’s Blog highlights of NINDS-funded research discoveries in 2014 includes Nan Wang’s paper, “Neuronal targets of mutant huntingtin genetic reduction to ameliorate Huntington’s disease pathogenesis in mice.”:
The Most Influential Huntington’s Disease Research Paper of 2014, Huntington’s Disease Study Group/HD Insights (2014):
The Yang lab and collaborators receive one of fifty-eight grants from the first BRAIN Initiative Award from NIH – Tools for Cells and Circuits (2014):
[NIH Announcement] [White House Announcement] [UCLA Press Release] [Project Info]
William Yang on the NBC Nightly News report, “Hacking the gene code of Huntington’s Disease.”:
Video introduction of the Huntington Interactome:
William Yang’s lecture on the “Genetic Dissection of Basal Ganglia Circuitry: Novel Insights into Opiate Reward” from the Cold Spring Harbor course on the Cellular Biology of Addiction: