Making Connections from Stem Cells to Brain Development
U-M alumna works to understand how bioelectrical activity in neural circuits influences brain development
When she was a child, Beverly Piggott (Ph.D., ’12) dreamed of being a physician. As she watched her mother, a four-time lymphoma survivor, go through various treatments, Piggott witnessed first-hand how scientific advances — such as the evolution from chemotherapies to immunotherapies — can save lives.
It was as a graduate student at the University of Michigan that Piggott began to connect this passion for physiology with her blossoming interest in neurobiology.
Under the mentorship of Shawn Xu at the U-M Life Sciences Institute, she explored how the nervous system generates behavior by studying the neural circuitry in millimeter-long roundworms called C. elegans.
“In Shawn’s lab, I came to appreciate the beautiful architecture of the brain and how the nervous system creates brains in a very defined way,” recalls Piggott, who is now an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Montana. “I became interested in understanding how the brain is built and how electrical activity influences development.”
Neurons cause excitable tissue, like muscle, to contract using electrical activity that is regulated by proteins called ion channels. But researchers are also finding that this bioelectricity plays an essential role in non-excitable tissues such as stem cells, the progenitors that differentiate, proliferate and eventually develop into a worm, a sunflower, a human being — or sometimes a brain tumor.
Changing the channel
To better understand how and why these channels work in stem cells, Piggott headed west in 2012 to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of pioneering neuroscientist and ion channel expert Yuh-Nung Jan at the University of California, San Francisco. There, she began studying the role of ion channels in the developing brain, both in a normal context and in cancer.
Trading worms for Drosophila melanogaster — the common fruit fly — she investigated proteins called voltage-gated sodium channels in neural stem cells. She found that removing or mutating these ion channels stunted normal brain development. Moreover, by manipulating the channels in brain tumor models, she was able to shrink the tumors; it appeared they use these sodium channels to grow.
“Looking at these channels in a developmental context in cancer is important because ion channels are incredibly druggable,” Piggott says. “If we can understand what these proteins do in proliferation, potentially we could use different drugs to manipulate their activity. You could potentially have new therapies for developmental disorders, regeneration and cancer.”
... being able to continue pursuing research where I can carve out a new idea that could potentially help someone someday, that’s a real inspiration to me
Flying in Big Sky Country
In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Piggott accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Montana. She packed up her fruit flies and drove to Big Sky Country to start her own lab.
“Beverly is an incredible young scientist with a great trajectory. She sets high goals and works really hard toward them,” says Xu, the Bernard W. Agranoff Collegiate Professor in the Life Sciences and professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the U-M Medical School. “She is passionate about science and loves what she has been doing. I still miss the days while she was at the LSI. I am very proud of her.”
Following in Xu’s footsteps, today Piggott mentors students of her own. The six-member Piggott Lab explores the function of ion channels in normal brain development and in cancer using Drosophila.
“I learned how to be a scientist in Shawn’s lab. He taught me how to ask interesting, novel questions,” Piggott says. “And now, being able to continue pursuing research where I can carve out a new idea that could potentially help someone someday, that’s a real inspiration to me because I’ve seen it in my own life.”