Marla B. Luskin, Ph.D.

Marla Luskin was a 1989 Pew scholar and passed away in 2021. Her laboratory was engaged in research to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating the proliferation, migration and differentiation of neurons during the development of the mammalian forebrain. The neurons destined for the forebrain arise from the germinal ventricular and subventricular zones surrounding the lateral ventricles, although the postnatal subventricular zone generates predominantly glia. Studies in her laboratory, however, demonstrated that cells originating from a discrete region of the anterior part of the neonatal subventricular zone (referred to as the SVZa) are destined exclusively for the olfactory bulb, where they differentiate into one of two types of interneurons.