Professor Shelly Buffington of the University of Texas Medical Branch will give a seminar titled "Microbially-derived metabolites in neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disorders" from 3-4 p.m. today, April 17, in Chemistry Building 144. The talk is free and open to the public.

Traditionally, neurodevelopmental disorders and the underlying pathology were exclusively attributed to variation in the human genome; however, it is becoming increasingly evident that the microbiome can likewise contribute to host brain and behavioral dysfunction. Microbiome-directed therapies are, accordingly, emerging as an exciting new avenue for ameliorating maladaptive behaviors associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.

In recent work, Buffington's group found that treatment with the commensal bacteria Limosilactobacillus reuteri rescues social dysfunction and related deficits in synaptic plasticity within the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic reward circuit in both environmental and genetic preclinical mouse models for autism spectrum disorder and began to unravel the underlying mechanisms. In the seminar, she will discuss her group's latest findings revealing the therapeutic utility of targeting the maternal gut microbiome to prevent adverse effects of maternal high-fat diet on descendant behavioral outcomes.

Buffington graduated summa cum laude from the U of A with a degree in chemistry in 2007. She performed her NIH F31-funded doctoral research in neuroscience with Matt Rasband at Baylor College of Medicine, where she went on to postdoc with Mauro Costa-Mattioli. Here, she pioneered a new research direction in the lab, investigating the relationship between maternal diet-induced obesity and heightened risk for neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring.

Now, as an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, she and her NIH R01-funded research team are studying the mechanisms by which environmentally induced disruption of the maternal gut microbiome and its remodeling during pregnancy influence fetal programming of brain development and behavior, as well as the potential for therapeutic targeting of the maternal gut microbiome to improve long-term neuropsychiatric outcomes in descendant generations. Her work has been published in many high-profile journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Neuron and Cell, and featured by popular news outlets such as The Economist and The New York Times.