Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Mapping brain development, activity, and connectivity

The goal of Kalhor Lab is to understand how genetic and environmental factors alter cell fate trajectories during development to shape developmental variability, adult phenotype, and disease susceptibility. To accomplish this, we develop: (a) genomic recording approaches to map the cell fate landscape in utero, (b) spatial omics strategies to characterize spatiotemporal changes in tissues during development, and (c) computational methods that integrate genomically recorded and spatially resolved information to reconstruct developmental processes. 

We apply these approaches to investigate how mutations in lineage specification factors (e.g., PAX6) and epigenetic regulators (e.g., CHD8, MECP2) perturb developmental trajectories in the central nervous system and cause neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Our work aims to identify the cell types and developmental stages affected by genetic deficiencies, characterize the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying developmental instability and abnormal development, and determine how environmental insults interact with genetic risk factors to shape phenotypic outcomes.