Professor Soojin Ryu

About me:

As a recently appointed Mireille Gillings Professor of Neurobiology (awarded to women academics developing the next generation of female leaders in medicine, science, leadership and business) Soojin Ryu joined the University of Exeter College of Medicine and Health and the Living Systems Institute in January 2020.

She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Harvard University (John Harvard Award for Excellence 1994) and her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in the laboratory of Professor Robert Tjian. During her studies at Berkeley as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, she identified a novel protein complex which plays a key role in gene regulation.

Soojin joined Professor Wolfgang Driever’s group as a Human Frontiers Long term Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Freiburg. Here her work focused on molecular mechanisms for neuronal fate specification using zebrafish as a model organism.

In 2008, she was appointed as a Max Planck Independent Research Group Leader and joined the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg where she stayed until 2016. During this period, Soojin’s lab contributed significantly to establishing zebrafish as a new model organism for stress research.

Until 2019, Soojin was a part of the medical faculty of the University of Mainz in Germany as a Professor where her work firmly established zebrafish models of human stress-induced disorders.

Role of Stress Hormones on Animal Behaviour

Soojin is deeply interested in how stress hormones shape animal behavior including the ways in which prolonged stress exposure leads to behavioral dysfunctions. Her long-term goal is to use this knowledge to identify novel therapeutic targets for stress-induced disorders in humans.

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Interests:

Stress on Brain and Behaviour

Prolonged or severe exposure to stress hormones can lead to behavioural dysfunctions. I lead a group developing detailed and sophisticated models relating to the effects of stress on brain and behavior using zebrafish. We are particularly interested in understanding how prolonged or severe exposure to stress hormones lead to behavioral dysfunctions. Our current research centers around the key stress hormones produced by our body’s main stress response system, the Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis. The HPA axis coordinates diverse aspects of stress response in all vertebrates and the hormones produced by the HPA axis are remarkably conserved throughout vertebrate kingdom. Strikingly, while critical for the survival and coping capacity of the animal in fluctuating environment, the prolonged exposure to the HPA axis hormones is harmful and the dysregulation of the HPA axis is strongly implicated in a number of stress-induced disorders in humans including depression and anxiety disorders.

Pioneering Work with Zebrafish

Although it has long been recognised that humans share 70% of their genes with zebrafish the latter's application to particular areas of medical research is a developing science. Our lab has successfully applied advanced research techniques to establish zebrafish as a model organism with which to study the stress reponse and HPA axis function. This method enables us to unravel complex underlying mechanisms by which the HPA axis hormones exert their functions both in normal and compromised individuals, our lab has invested significant effort in establishing zebrafish as a model organism to study HPA axis function. As a part of this effort we have developed a method that allows modulation of the HPA axis hormone levels at will in a living animal.

Using such manipulations combined with robust behavioral analysis and comprehensive molecular and cellular profiling, our primary goal is to identify hitherto unknown mechanisms that mediate stress hormone’s striking control of animal behavior. Given the high degree of conservation of the stress system throughout vertebrates, the mechanistic insights we gain in zebrafish will be invaluable for understanding human stress biology as well.

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Potential Therapeutic Applications

Recognising the potential for more sophisticated and specific medical interventions in the areas of depression and other stress-induced disorders our work is designed to harness the advantages for high-throughput analysis opportunities that zebrafish offers. To this end our second major goal is to screen for novel molecules that could ameliorate detrimental effects of stress as potential new therapeutic avenues for depression and other stress-induced disorders.

Qualifications:

• B.A. in Biology, Harvard University
• Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley