Gloria Choi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Gloria Choi
Born	South Korea
Nationality	American
Alma mater	B.A. University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. Caltech, Postdoctoral work Columbia University
Known for	Maternal immune activation drives Th17 cells to release IL-17a causing cortical defects in offspring and ASD-like behavioral phenotypes
Awards	2019 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Awardee, 2018 Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award Winner, 2017 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Pilot Awardee, 2014 Cell’s 40th Anniversary 40 under 40, 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship
Scientific career
Fields	Neuroscience, neuroimmunology
Institutions	Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Korean name
Hangul	최보윤
Revised Romanization	Choe Boyun
McCune–Reischauer	Ch'oe Poyun

Gloria Choi is an American neuroscientist and neuroimmunologist. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Choi is known for her important work on how the immune system can affect brain development. Her research helps us understand conditions like autism spectrum disorder. Her lab also studies how our senses, especially smell, influence our feelings and actions.

Early Life and Education

Gloria Choi was born in South Korea. She moved to America when she was a teenager. Her family settled in Southern California. Here, she found that math and science were easier to understand while she was learning English.

She especially loved biology in high school. This led her to study biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Starting Research Early

Because she liked to see how her studies could be used in real life, Choi joined a lab. She worked with Richard Harland to do research in molecular and cellular biology. Even as an undergraduate, she helped write an important paper in 2001. This paper showed how a part of a developing frog controls the size of its body segments.

Choi once thought about changing her major to accounting. But her mother's lack of response encouraged her to stick with biology. After getting her bachelor's degree from UCB, she went on to get her PhD in Biological Sciences at Caltech.

Graduate Studies

For her PhD at Caltech, Choi joined David J. Anderson's lab. At that time, Anderson was starting to study brain circuits that control natural behaviors. Early in her studies, Choi explored how cells in the central nervous system develop.

Her first paper as a co-first author showed how a special protein, Olig2, helps decide if cells become motor neurons or oligodendrocytes. She and her team also studied how other cells, called astrocytes, develop. They found that Olig1 and Olig2 also help guide the development of these cells. This research changed how scientists thought about how different brain cells are formed.

Choi then led projects looking at the brain circuits behind natural behaviors. Animals can sense other animals and react in specific ways, like defending themselves or reproducing. Choi wanted to know how these reactions are "hardwired" in the brain. She found two different pathways in the brain that both get information about smells. But one pathway leads to reproductive behaviors, and the other leads to defensive behaviors. This work showed how the brain can lead to different actions from the same sensory information.

Postdoctoral Research

After finishing her PhD in 2005, Choi moved to New York. She joined the lab of Nobel Prize winner Richard Axel for her postdoctoral training. She continued to study how the brain processes smells.

In 2011, she discovered that a brain area called the piriform cortex doesn't organize smells by location. She used a technique called optogenetics to stimulate specific groups of brain cells. She found that if she stimulated these cells and then gave an animal a shock or a reward, the animal would learn. Later, just stimulating those cells (without the shock or reward) would make the animal react as if it had received the shock or reward. This showed that the piriform cortex can trigger strong behaviors even without a real smell present.

Career and Research

In 2013, Gloria Choi became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her lab at MIT focuses on how sensory information leads to different internal states and behaviors. She uses the olfactory system (our sense of smell) to study how sensory inputs connect to actions. She also explores how brain chemicals change circuits and how these circuits stay flexible.

Recently, Dr. Choi has also started studying how the brain's immune system affects social behaviors. She looks at how a mother's immune system might affect the behavior of her offspring.

Oxytocin and Social Behavior

Oxytocin is a hormone known to be important for many social behaviors. Since smell is also very important for social interactions, Choi's team studied the role of oxytocin in social behaviors linked to smells.

They found that oxytocin is needed for animals to learn connections between smells and social cues. For example, learning that a certain smell means another animal is nearby. They also discovered that activating neurons that produce oxytocin helped with social learning. This showed that oxytocin signaling in the piriform cortex is key for learning social information from smells.

Immune System, Brain, and Social Behavior

Dr. Choi became interested in why mothers who have viral infections during pregnancy sometimes have children with a higher chance of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She uses a model called Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) to study this.

Choi and her team found that a specific type of immune cell (T cells) and a signaling molecule called IL-17a are needed for MIA to cause ASD-like behaviors in offspring. When these T cells release IL-17a in the mother, it can lead to unusual brain development in the offspring. This suggests that targeting these T cells in the mother might help prevent these inflammation-related ASD-like behaviors.

Next, Choi's team explored how these T cells get activated. They found that certain bacteria in the mother's gut help activate these T cells. These activated T cells then release IL-17a, which can lead to brain differences. Soon after, they found the main brain area affected in MIA models: the primary somatosensory cortex. They showed that calming this brain region reduced the ASD-like behaviors in the offspring.

More recently, Choi and her colleagues studied the role of IL-17 in helping with unusual social behavior in both MIA models and other models of ASD-like behavior. Their findings suggest that giving IL-17a during inflammation might be a way to reduce brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex. This could potentially help prevent social behavior difficulties.

Awards

• 2021 Carol and Gene Ludwig Award for Early Career Research
• 2021 Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Professorship
• 2019 Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation (NLMFF) Career Development Award
• 2019 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Awardee
• 2018 Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award Winner
• 2017 Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Pilot Awardee
• 2014 Cell's 40th Anniversary 40 under 40
• 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship

Personal Life

Gloria Choi is married to Jun Huh. He is also a professor, studying immunology at Harvard Medical School.