A. Kimberley McAllister[1] (born June 30, 1966) is an American cellular and molecular neuroscientist who specializes in synapse biology and neuroimmunology. She is director of a center for Neuroscience[2] and a Professor of Neurology[3] and Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior[4] and the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.[5]
McAllister was trained as a developmental neurobiologist by Lawrence C. Katz and Donald C. Lo and studied the role for neurotrophins in regulating dendritic growth of pyramidal neurons in the developing visual cortex.[8] During that time, she adapted biolistic transfection for use in transfecting neurons in organotypic slices.[9][10]
During the summer of 1998, she was a Grass Fellow in Neurophysiology at the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole.[11]
Her team made discoveries about the initial mechanisms of synapse formation.[12] Her lab also studies how “immune” molecules, such as major histocompatibility complex I molecules and cytokines, regulate the initial establishment of synaptic connections during brain development[13] as well as contribute to synapse loss in Alzheimer's disease. McAllister's team has led efforts to improve reproducibility in rodent models of maternal immune activation (MIA).[14][15] Through the interdisciplinary Conte Center[16] that she co-directs, her group has identified biomarkers in female mice before pregnancy and following MIA during gestation that predict susceptibility and resilience to schizophrenia- and autism-related behavioral and neurochemical alterations in offspring.[17]
McAllister has trained 10 pre-doctoral and 13 post-doctoral fellows and more than 60 undergraduates and 13 post-bacs. She has taught courses for both undergraduates and graduate students and is the founding director of the UC Davis Learning, Memory, and Plasticity (LaMP) Training Program.[19]
^Lo, Donald C.; McAllister, A. Kimberley; Katz, Lawrence C. (5 October 1994). "Neuronal transfection in brain slices using particle-mediated gene transfer". Neuron. 13 (6): 1263–1268. doi:10.1016/0896-6273(94)90412-X.
