Michael Wells

Assistant Professor, Human Genetics, University of California Los Angeles

UC Profile
Wells Lab site
Posts on X @MFWellsLab
Personal site

Interests

Human Variation, Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Neurodevelopment, Stem Cell Models, Human Genetics

Education and Training

Harvard University08/2021Developmental Biology
Duke UniversityPhD09/2015Neurobiology
University of Notre DameB.S.05/2008Biological Sciences

Awards and Honors

  • Intersections Science Fellow, Yale University, 2021.
  • Program for Achieving Career Excellence (PACE) Rising Star, Cornell University, 2020.
  • K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, National Institute of Mental Health, 2019-2024.
  • Rising Stars in Biomedicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019.
  • Postdoctoral Enrichment Program award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, 2018-2021.
  • F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Predoctoral Fellowship, National Institute of Mental Health, 2012-2015.

Publications

  1. Burberry A, Wells MF, Limone F, Couto A, Smith KS, Keaney J, Gillet G, van Gastel N, Wang JY, Pietilainen O, Qian M, Eggan P, Cantrell C, Mok J, Kadiu I, Scadden DT, Eggan K. C9orf72 suppresses systemic and neural inflammation induced by gut bacteria.. Nature, 2020.
  2. Chen Q, Deister CA, Gao X, Guo B, Lynn-Jones T, Chen N, Wells MF, Liu R, Goard MJ, Dimidschstein J, Feng S, Shi Y, Liao W, Lu Z, Fishell G, Moore CI, Feng G. Dysfunction of cortical GABAergic neurons leads to sensory hyper-reactivity in a Shank3 mouse model of ASD.. Nature neuroscience, 2020.
  3. Altimus CM, Marlin BJ, Charalambakis NE, Colón-Rodriquez A, Glover EJ, Izbicki P, Johnson A, Lourenco MV, Makinson RA, McQuail J, Obeso I, Padilla-Coreano N, Wells MF, for Training Advisory Committee. The Next 50 Years of Neuroscience.. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2020.
  4. Orefice LL, Mosko JR, Morency DT, Wells MF, Tasnim A, Mozeika SM, Ye M, Chirila AM, Emanuel AJ, Rankin G, Fame RM, Lehtinen MK, Feng G, Ginty DD. Targeting Peripheral Somatosensory Neurons to Improve Tactile-Related Phenotypes in ASD Models.. Cell, 2019.
  5. Salick MR, Wells MF, Eggan K, Kaykas A. Modelling Zika Virus Infection of the Developing Human Brain In Vitro Using Stem Cell Derived Cerebral Organoids.. Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2017.
  6. Wells MF, Salick MR, Wiskow O, Ho DJ, Worringer KA, Ihry RJ, Kommineni S, Bilican B, Klim JR, Hill EJ, Kane LT, Ye C, Kaykas A, Eggan K. Genetic Ablation of AXL Does Not Protect Human Neural Progenitor Cells and Cerebral Organoids from Zika Virus Infection.. Cell stem cell, 2016.
  7. Wells MF, Wimmer RD, Schmitt LI, Feng G, Halassa MM. Thalamic reticular impairment underlies attention deficit in Ptchd1(Y/-) mice.. Nature, 2016.
  8. Peça J, Feliciano C, Ting JT, Wang W, Wells MF, Venkatraman TN, Lascola CD, Fu Z, Feng G. Shank3 mutant mice display autistic-like behaviours and striatal dysfunction.. Nature, 2011.