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Current Research:
Whether deciding to pursue a mate or attack a competitor, social interactions are critical for survival. It is particularly important for the brain to regulate aggressive interactions, as they can lead to injury and even death in the incorrect environmental or social contexts.
Aggression shares similar behavioral and neuronal circuit features in flies and mammals, including its display across sexes. Previous work identified key cell types and neuronal circuits underlying male aggression in flies, yet comparatively little was known about the neuronal circuits regulating female aggression. Through using connectomics along with machine learning and genetic techniques, my work has identified neuronal circuitry modulating engagement in female aggression (Schretter et al., 2020). I have since expanded upon this work and, in collaborations with David Anderson's lab at Caltech, Vanessa Ruta's lab at Rockefeller, and Kristin Branson's lab at Janelia, we have uncovered cell types regulating persistent female aggression and neuronal circuits underlying how social states, like aggression, modulate vision (Chiu,...Schretter, 2023; Schretter et al., 2024).
Biography
I am interested in understanding how the environment shapes social interactions and underlying circuits. I enjoy taking an interdisciplinary approach to answering such questions and my training given me experience in a broad range of topics (Neuroscience, Genetics, Machine Learning, Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry) and models (R. norvegicus, M. musculus, D. melanogaster, microglia cell culture, and organotypic brain slice culture).
As I have been fortunate to have a series of mentors and educators who championed my creativity, I remain committed to engaging, designing, and leading programs to foster communities in which all individuals feel supported and encouraged to pursue their own goals and creative ideas. At Janelia, I created a new mentorship program for technicians and staff so that they could discuss their goals and career trajectories with peers and trained mentors. I also have experience mentoring across disciplines and goals, with some of my mentees going on to pursue careers in medicine and biotechnology. As an educator, I have designed courses, taught lectures, and led discussion sections and labs across a variety of subjects (Evolution, Physiology, Biochemistry, Host-Microbe Interactions), including teaching modified versions of my behavioral assays and analysis code in an undergraduate course.
Education
Previous Experience
Brain-body regulation of behavior. While the gut microbiota has been implicated in modulating behaviors from foraging to social interactions, the mechanisms mediating these effects remained relatively unknown. During my doctoral research, I developed a highly independent project determining how the gut microbial environment shapes animal behavior (Schretter et al., 2018). This work and studies in rodent models served as the foundation for my interest in multisensory integration and social interactions.