Joshua Sanes

Joshua Sanes has devoted most of his scientific career to the study of synaptogenesis. For many years, he and his colleagues used the neuromuscular junction to discover key components of the intercellular communication systems that lead to formation, maturation and maintenance of this synapse. Later, they turned to the retina to tackle the issue of synaptic specificity – how neurons choose appropriate partners to generate the complex circuits that underlie the initial steps of visual processing. In both sets of studies, they combined molecular, genetic, histological and physiological methods to elucidate cellular and molecular mechanisms that turn out to be conserved throughout the nervous system. In the course of this work, they also pioneered new ways to mark and manipulate neurons and the synapses they form – for example XFP and Brainbow mice. Most recently, they have used high throughput single cell transcriptomics to catalogue and characterize all of the cell types in the mouse retina, generating the first complete cell atlas for a vertebrate brain region.  This atlas, in turn, has provided a foundation for studies on the human retina and on retinal development, injury, disease and evolution. Their work has been published in over 200 papers. 

Sanes received a BA from Yale, and a PhD from Harvard, then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard and UCSF. He served on the faculty of Washington University for over 20 years before returning to Harvard in 2004 as Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Founding Director of the Center for Brain Science. He has served on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals, including Cell and Neuron; as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors and the National Advisory Council of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NIH), the Council of the Society for Neuroscience, and NIH planning committees for the BRAIN and Audacious Goals Initiatives; on advisory panels for the Max-Planck Institute, Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NIH; and as Interim Director of Ophthalmology Research at Biogen. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has given many named and keynote talks, including Grass, Harvey, Hamburger and Kuffler Lectures.  His work has been honored with the Schuetze, Scolnick, Perl/UNC, Cowan and Gruber Awards, and by an Honorary Degree from Hebrew University.