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Current position
Visiting Fellow BSc Hons (Monash), PhD (ANU)
Career Summary:
My Honours (1968) and Masters (1970) degrees were obtained from Monash University. I then had positions in the Department of Physiology, Monash University (1970-1971), Department of Clinical Neurology, the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queens Square, London (1971-1972) and the Department of Human Anatomy, University of Oxford (1973-74). In 1974 I joined the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University and was a Research Officer in the Developmental Neurobiology Group until 2002. I received a PhD from the University in 1983. In 2003 I became a Visiting Fellow in the Visual Sciences Group and am now in the Central Nervous System and Stability and DegenerationGroup.
My honours degree was in the field of endocrinology but my subsequent research has been in neuroscience, primarily in the development of neuronal connections. Early work in the 1970s (with RF Mark) examined the mechanism of selective reinnervation of muscle at the functional, electrophysiological and ultrastructural level. These experiments pointed to a competitive process of reinnervation whereby the presence of the correct blocked transmission of the incorrect nerve without a change in the structure of the "repressed" synapses, at least in the short term. This led us to suggest that such competitive interactions between presynaptic endings might also operate in development. Further work on ultrastructural analysis of specificity of retinal projections in fish tectum showed that although competitive processes operated within normal areas of termination retinal axons did not synapse in denervated foreign territory even when the availability of normal sites was reduced. A series of papers (with RF Mark and J Wye-Dvorak) described the structural and electrophysiological correlates of reorganization of retinotopic retinotectal maps.
More recently, I have been involved in a program that was set up by Richard Mark, using the Australian marsupial wallaby as a model for mammalian nervous system development. Their unique mode of development means they are accessible for experimental manipulation in the pouch from very early developmental stages, in contrast to placental mammals where a large part of development takes place prenatally and is not amenable to intervention. Work has concentrated on the development of sensory pathways. Analysis of the development of the somatosensory whisker pathway (with RF Mark, PME Waite and CA Leamey) indicated that maturity of the target tissue as well as peripheral input combine to initiate pattern formation at each level of the pathway. Studies on visual and somatosensory cortical development (with CA Leamey, RF Mark and A Pearce) showed that thalamocortical connections develop without a waiting period, suggesting that the role of the subplate in cortical development has been overstated. Current work (initiated with M Vidovic) is on molecular mechanisms of the development of topography of retinal projections to primary visual centres (with CA Leamey).
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Selected Publications
More publications for CSD are available as a PDF
Key Publications.
Brian Wimborne, Lauren R Marotte and Richard F. Mark.
The Brain of the Tammar Wallaby (Macropus eugenii)
in Stereotaxic Coordinates (2008).
C.A. Leamey, S.M.Ho, D.L. Flett and L.R. Marotte. Onset of connectivity in the trigeminal pathway of the wallaby: ultrastructural and in vitro electrophysiological analysis in the somatosensory cortex. Euro J Neurosci (2007) 25: 3058
D.L. Flett, C.H. Lim. S.M. Ho, R.F. Mark and L.R. Marotte. Retinocollicular synaptogenesis and synaptic transmission during formation of the visual map in the superior colliculus of the wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Euro J Neurosci (2006) 23: 3043-3050.
L.R. Marotte, M. Vidovic, E. Wheeler and S. Jhaveri. Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor is expressed in a gradient during development of the retinocollicular map. Euro J Neurosci (2004) 20:843-847.
A.R. Pearce and L.R. Marotte. The first thalamocortical synapses are made in the cortical plate in the developing visual cortex of the wallaby ( Macropus eugenii ). J. Comp. Neurol. (2003) 461: 205-216.
M. Vidovic and L.R.Marotte. Analysis of EphB receptors and their ligands in the developing retinocollicular system of the wallaby reveals dynamic patterns of expression in the retina. Euro J Neurosci (2003) 18:1549-1558.
L.R. Marotte and X-M. Sheng. Neurogenesis and identification of developing layers in the visual cortex of the wallaby ( Macropus eugenii ). J. Comp. Neurol . (2000) 416:131-142.
J. Stubbs, A. Palmer, M. Vidovic and L.R. Marotte. Graded expression of EphA3 in the retina and ephrin-A2 in the superior colliculus during initial development of coarse topography in the wallaby retinocollicular projection. Euro. J. Neurosci. (2000) 12: 3626-3636.
P.M.E. Waite, L.R. Marotte, C.A. Leamey and R.F. Mark. Development of whisker-related patterns in marsupials: factors controlling timing. Trends in Neurosci . (1998) 21:265-269.
L.R. Marotte, C.A. Leamey and P.M.E. Waite. Time course of development of the wallaby trigeminal pathway: III. Thalamocortical and corticothalamic projections. J. Comp. Neurol. (1997) 387: 194-214.
Y. Ding and L.R. Marotte. Retinotopic order in the optic nerve and superior colliculus during development of the retinocollicular projection in the wallaby ( Macropus eugenii ). Anat. Embryol. (1997) 196: 148-158.
R.F. Mark, T.C.B. Freeman, Y. Ding and L.R. Marotte. Two stages in the development of a mammalian retinocolicular projection. NeuroReport (1993) 5: 117-120.
R.F. Mark and L.R. Marotte. Australian marsupials as models for the development of the mammalian visual system. Trends in Neuroscience (1992) 15: 51-57.
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