Dr. McClung’s work focuses on the molecular biology of mood disorders and drug addiction. This is a field that she have been involved in for many years. For her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Virginia with Dr. Jay Hirsh, she pioneered the use of the fruit fly, Drosophila as a model system to study the genes involved in cocaine sensitization. She went on to do her postdoctoral work with Dr. Eric Nestler at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has been a leader in molecular psychiatry. There she studied the importance of changes in gene expression in the regulation of drug reward and mood-related behavior in pre-clinical models. Through work as both a graduate student and a postdoc, Dr. McClung became interested in the role of the genes that control circadian rhythms and central rhythm disruptions in the development of addiction and mood disorders.  In 2005 she became an assistant professor in Psychiatry at UT Southwestern and in 2011 became an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry.  Her work has been very fruitful: She has been awarded grants from NINDS, NIMH and NIDA for this work to continue, and has published several high profile papers.  She has also received a Brain Disorders Award from the McKnight Foundation, the President’s Research Council Distinguished Young Investigator Award at UT Southwestern, two NARSAD Young Investigator Awards and a NARSAD Independent Investigator Award.  Dr. McClung and her team are committed to understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie diseases like bipolar disorder and major depression with the hopes of developing better treatments in the future.  

Learning Objectives - At the conclusion of this lecture, participants will be able to: 

Understand how circadian rhythms are regulated. 
Know the association between circadian rhythms and psychiatric disorders.
Understand molecular and cellular mechanisms are regulated by circadian genes.