Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D.

Dr. Konopka is a Professor of Neuroscience and the Jon Heighten Scholar in Autism Research and Townsend Distinguished Chair in Research on Autism Spectrum Disorders at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Konopka received dual bachelor of science degrees in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biology from MIT and completed her Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Harvard University. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, an NIH Pathway to Independence Award, a Basil O’Connor Scholar Award from the March of Dimes, a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and an Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation.

The research in the Konopka lab focuses on understanding the molecular pathways important for human brain evolution that are also at risk in cognitive disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer disease. Her lab uses a combination of human neurons, animal models, and primate comparative genomics to uncover human-specific, disease-relevant patterns of gene expression. Dr. Konopka is particularly interested in the molecular mechanisms underlying language and part of her research has focused on the FOXP family of transcription factors. Recent work in her lab integrates gene expression with signatures of neuronal activity in the human brain. The Konopka lab is also part of the international Human Cell Atlas effort to map gene expression in every cell of the human body.

Undergraduate

Massachusetts Institute of Tec (1997), Biology

Graduate School

Harvard University (2004)

• Autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease
• Brain evolution
• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Neurogenetics

Featured Publications

FOXP1 orchestrates neurogenesis in human cortical basal radial glial cells.

Park SHE, Kulkarni A, Konopka G, PLoS Biol 2023 Aug 21 8 e3001852

Molecular features driving cellular complexity of human brain evolution.

Caglayan E, Ayhan F, Liu Y, Vollmer RM, Oh E, Sherwood CC, Preuss TM, Yi SV, Konopka G, Nature 2023 Jul

Neuronal ambient RNA contamination causes misinterpreted and masked cell types in brain single-nuclei datasets.

Caglayan E, Liu Y, Konopka G, Neuron 2022 Sep

Resolving cellular and molecular diversity along the hippocampal anterior-to-posterior axis in humans.

Ayhan F, Kulkarni A, Berto S, Sivaprakasam K, Douglas C, Lega BC, Konopka G, Neuron 2021 May

Gene-expression correlates of the oscillatory signatures supporting human episodic memory encoding.

Berto S, Fontenot MR, Seger S, Ayhan F, Caglayan E, Kulkarni A, Douglas C, Tamminga CA, Lega BC, Konopka G, Nat Neurosci 2021 Apr 24 4 554-564

Cellular transcriptomics reveals evolutionary identities of songbird vocal circuits.

Colquitt BM, Merullo DP, Konopka G, Roberts TF, Brainard MS, Science 2021 02 371 6530

Single-Cell Analysis of Foxp1-Driven Mechanisms Essential for Striatal Development.

Anderson AG, Kulkarni A, Harper M, Konopka G, Cell Rep 2020 Mar 30 9 3051-3066.e7

Cortical Foxp2 Supports Behavioral Flexibility and Developmental Dopamine D1 Receptor Expression.

Co M, Hickey SL, Kulkarni A, Harper M, Konopka G, Cereb. Cortex 2019 Nov

Accelerated evolution of oligodendrocytes in the human brain.

Berto S, Mendizabal I, Usui N, Toriumi K, Chatterjee P, Douglas C, Tamminga CA, Preuss TM, Yi SV, Konopka G, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2019 Nov 116 48 24334-24342

Correspondence between Resting-State Activity and Brain Gene Expression.

Wang GZ, Belgard TG, Mao D, Chen L, Berto S, Preuss TM, Lu H, Geschwind DH, Konopka G Neuron 2015 Nov 88 4 659-66

 Featured Books

International Review of Neurobiology: Neurobiology of Autism

Konopka, G (Ed.) (2013). London, UK, Elsevier

Evolution and Development of Language. In Advances in Evolutionary Developmental Biology

Miller, D.J., and Konopka, G. (2013). Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc

FOXP2: linking language and autism. In The Autisms: Molecules to Model Systems

Konopka, G. (2013). New York, NY, Oxford University Press

• Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award
  The James S. McDonnell Foundation (2016)
• Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Award
  March of Dimes (2013)
• Kavli Fellow
  (2013)
• Young Investigator Award
  International Society for Autism Research (2013)
• NIH Pathway to Independence Award
  NIMH (2010)
• Young Investigator Award
  National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) (2008)
• A. P. Giannini Foundation Medical Research Fellowship
  (2007)
• NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship
  (2005)

• International Society for Autism Research (2012)
• Society for Neuroscience (1997)
• UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) (2011)