Erik Bloss

Education

  • University of Colorado at Boulder, 2005, Bachelor’s of Arts
  • Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 2012, PhD

Brief Biography

My career has focused on two major questions – how are neuronal cell types wired together to form functional circuits, and how do these circuits deteriorate during aging and in disease? First at The Rockefeller University and then at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, my work focused on how stress and aging change the wiring of cortical circuits. As a postdoc at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus, I developed imaging approaches to determine how genetically and neuroanatomically defined cell types are wired together. The rules obtained from these experiments suggest specific ways that circuits transform inputs into outputs.

At The Jackson Laboratory, we wish to advance these rules and understand how circuits alter their wiring during learning to store memories. We use both light and electron microscopy approaches, techniques to silence or excite specific neurons, and strategies to delete individual genes from defined neuronal subsets. We also use in vivo neurophysiological strategies in awake, behaving mice to relate behavioral plasticity to changes in neuron activity. Other major projects in the lab seek to understand how cortical and hippocampal circuits are vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, and whether innovative circuit manipulations can protect neurons from pathology. In many experiments, we use genetically distinct mice with the broader goal of understanding how the processes we study might be modulated differently by genomic diversity.

To reach CV press here.

Research Areas:

  • Aging
  • Behavioral/Cognitive Sciences
  • Molecular and Cellular Biology
  • Neuroscience
  • Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Neuronal cell types
  • Synapses

Publications:

  • Heuer SE, Keezer KJ, Hewes AA, Onos KD, Graham KC, Howell GR, Bloss EB. Genetic context controls early microglia-synaptic interactions in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. bioRxiv. 2023 Apr 29;. doi: 10.1101/2023.04.28.538728. PubMed PMID: 37162819; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC10168315
  • Graham K, Spruston N, Bloss EB. Hippocampal and thalamic afferents form distinct synaptic microcircuits in the mouse infralimbic frontal cortex. Cell Rep. 2021 Oct 19;37(3):109837. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109837. PubMed PMID: 34686328
  • Bloss EB, Hunt DL. Revealing the Synaptic Hodology of Mammalian Neural Circuits With Multiscale Neurocartography. Front Neuroinform. 2019;13:52. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2019.00052. eCollection 2019. PubMed PMID: 31427940; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6690003
  • Bloss EB, Cembrowski MS, Karsh B, Colonell J, Fetter RD, Spruston N. Single excitatory axons form clustered synapses onto CA1 pyramidal cell dendrites. Nat Neurosci. 2018 Mar;21(3):353-363. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0084-6. Epub 2018 Feb 19. PubMed PMID: 29459763
  • Bloss EB, Cembrowski MS, Karsh B, Colonell J, Fetter RD, Spruston N. Structured Dendritic Inhibition Supports Branch-Selective Integration in CA1 Pyramidal Cells. Neuron. 2016 Mar 2;89(5):1016-30. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.01.029. Epub 2016 Feb 18. PubMed PMID: 26898780
  • Milstein AD, Bloss EB, Apostolides PF, Vaidya SP, Dilly GA, Zemelman BV, Magee JC. Inhibitory Gating of Input Comparison in the CA1 Microcircuit. Neuron. 2015 Sep 23;87(6):1274-1289. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.08.025. PubMed PMID: 26402609
  • Viswanathan S, Williams ME, Bloss EB, Stasevich TJ, Speer CM, Nern A, Pfeiffer BD, Hooks BM, Li WP, English BP, Tian T, Henry GL, Macklin JJ, Patel R, Gerfen CR, Zhuang X, Wang Y, Rubin GM, Looger LL. High-performance probes for light and electron microscopy. Nat Methods. 2015 Jun;12(6):568-76. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3365. Epub 2015 Apr 27. PubMed PMID: 25915120; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4573404
  • Bloss EB, Puri R, Yuk F, Punsoni M, Hara Y, Janssen WG, McEwen BS, Morrison JH. Morphological and molecular changes in aging rat prelimbic prefrontal cortical synapses. Neurobiol Aging. 2013 Jan;34(1):200-10. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2012.05.014. Epub 2012 Jun 22. PubMed PMID: 22727942; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3483440
  • Graves AR, Moore SJ, Bloss EB, Mensh BD, Kath WL, Spruston N. Hippocampal pyramidal neurons comprise two distinct cell types that are countermodulated by metabotropic receptors. Neuron. 2012 Nov 21;76(4):776-89. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.09.036. PubMed PMID: 23177962; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3509417
  • Ohm DT, Bloss EB, Janssen WG, Dietz KC, Wadsworth S, Lou W, Gee NA, Lasley BL, Rapp PR, Morrison JH. Clinically relevant hormone treatments fail to induce spinogenesis in prefrontal cortex of aged female rhesus monkeys. J Neurosci. 2012 Aug 22;32(34):11700-5. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1881-12.2012. PubMed PMID: 22915112; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3657730
  • Bloss EB, Janssen WG, Ohm DT, Yuk FJ, Wadsworth S, Saardi KM, McEwen BS, Morrison JH. Evidence for reduced experience-dependent dendritic spine plasticity in the aging prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci. 2011 May 25;31(21):7831-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0839-11.2011. PubMed PMID: 21613496; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3398699
  • Karatsoreos IN, Bhagat S, Bloss EB, Morrison JH, McEwen BS. Disruption of circadian clocks has ramifications for metabolism, brain, and behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Jan 25;108(4):1657-62. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018375108. Epub 2011 Jan 10. PubMed PMID: 21220317; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3029753
  • Bozdagi O, Wang XB, Nikitczuk JS, Anderson TR, Bloss EB, Radice GL, Zhou Q, Benson DL, Huntley GW. Persistence of coordinated long-term potentiation and dendritic spine enlargement at mature hippocampal CA1 synapses requires N-cadherin. J Neurosci. 2010 Jul 28;30(30):9984-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1223-10.2010. PubMed PMID: 20668183; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2921177
  • Bloss EB, Janssen WG, McEwen BS, Morrison JH. Interactive effects of stress and aging on structural plasticity in the prefrontal cortex. J Neurosci. 2010 May 12;30(19):6726-31. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0759-10.2010. PubMed PMID: 20463234; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2888496
  • Goldwater DS, Pavlides C, Hunter RG, Bloss EB, Hof PR, McEwen BS, Morrison JH. Structural and functional alterations to rat medial prefrontal cortex following chronic restraint stress and recovery. Neuroscience. 2009 Dec 1;164(2):798-808. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2009.08.053. Epub 2009 Aug 29. PubMed PMID: 19723561; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2762025
  • Zhang M, Poplawski M, Yen K, Cheng H, Bloss E, Zhu X, Patel H, Mobbs CV. Role of CBP and SATB-1 in aging, dietary restriction, and insulin-like signaling. PLoS Biol. 2009 Nov;7(11):e1000245. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000245. Epub 2009 Nov 17. PubMed PMID: 19924292; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2774267