Marc R. Freeman, Ph.D.

  • Professor, Vollum Institute
  • Director and Senior Scientist, Vollum Institute
  • Neuroscience Graduate Program, School of Medicine

Biography

Marc Freeman is director of the Vollum Institute. He earned his B.S. in Biology from Eastern Connecticut State University in 1993. He carried out his doctoral training in the laboratory of John Carlson at Yale University and obtained his Ph.D. in Biology in 1999. Freeman trained as a postdoctoral associate with Chris Q. Doe at the University of Oregon from 1999–2004. He started his laboratory in the Department of Neurobiology at The University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2004, focusing on glia-neuron interactions in the healthy and diseased brain. In 2016, Freeman joined the Vollum Institute.

Neurons are not alone in the nervous system; glial cells constitute the majority of the cells in the human brain. Despite their abundance, surprisingly little is known about how glia develop or function in the mature nervous system. The Freeman Lab uses the fruit fly Drosophila as a model to explore fundamental aspects of glial cell biology. Defining the precise roles that glia play will be a crucial step if we wish to understand how the nervous system is assembled, functions to drive animal behavior, and is maintained in a healthy state for the life of an animal.

Education and training

  • Degrees

    • B.S., 1993, Eastern Connecticut State University
    • Ph.D., 1999, Yale University

Areas of interest

  • glia
  • axon
  • Wallerian degeneration
  • neuron-glia signaling
  • astrocytes
  • neurodegeneration
  • Drosophila

Honors and awards

  • Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2005)
  • Early Career Scientist Award, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2009)
  • Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2013-2016)

Publications

Publications

  • Astrocyte growth is driven by the Tre1/S1pr1 phospholipid-binding G protein-coupled receptor

    Neuron
    1. Jiakun Chen
    2. Tobias Stork
    3. Yunsik Kang
    4. Katherine A.M. Nardone
    5. Franziska Auer
    6. Ryan J. Farrell
    7. Taylor R. Jay
    8. Dongeun Heo
    9. Amy Sheehan
    10. Cameron Paton
    11. Katherine I. Nagel
    12. David Schoppik
    13. Kelly R. Monk
    14. Marc R. Freeman
  • Glial Regulation of Circuit Wiring, Firing, and Expiring in the Drosophila Central Nervous System

    Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology
    1. Jaeda Coutinho-Budd
    2. Marc R. Freeman
    3. Sarah Ackerman
  • Glial TGFβ activity promotes neuron survival in peripheral nerves

    Journal of Cell Biology
    1. Alexandria P. Lassetter
    2. Megan M. Corty
    3. Romina Barria
    4. Amy E. Sheehan
    5. Jo Q. Hill
    6. Sue A. Aicher
    7. A. Nicole Fox
    8. Marc R. Freeman
  • Astrocytic GABA transporter controls sleep by modulating GABAergic signaling in Drosophila circadian neurons

    Current Biology
    1. Ratna Chaturvedi
    2. Tobias Stork
    3. Chunyan Yuan
    4. Marc R. Freeman
    5. Patrick Emery
  • Discoidin domain receptor regulates ensheathment, survival and caliber of peripheral axons

    Development (Cambridge)
    1. Megan M. Corty
    2. Alexandria L. Hulegaard
    3. Jo Q. Hill
    4. Amy E. Sheehan
    5. Sue A. Aicher
    6. Marc R. Freeman
  • An ELISA-based method for rapid genetic screens in Drosophila

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    1. Taylor R. Jay
    2. Yunsik Kang
    3. Amanda Jefferson
    4. Marc R. Freeman
  • Astrocytes close a motor circuit critical period

    Nature
    1. Sarah D. Ackerman
    2. Nelson A. Perez-Catalan
    3. Marc R. Freeman
    4. Chris Q. Doe
  • Genetic diversity of axon degenerative mechanisms in models of Parkinson's disease

    Neurobiology of Disease
    1. Owen M. Peters
    2. Alexandra Weiss
    3. Jake Metterville
    4. Lina Song
    5. Robert Logan
    6. Gaynor A. Smith
    7. Michael A. Schwarzschild
    8. Christian Mueller
    9. Robert H. Brown
    10. Marc Freeman
  • Injury-Induced Inhibition of Bystander Neurons Requires dSarm and Signaling from Glia

    Neuron
    1. Jiun Min Hsu
    2. Yunsik Kang
    3. Megan M. Corty
    4. Danielle Mathieson
    5. Owen M. Peters
    6. Marc R. Freeman
  • TSG101 negatively regulates mitochondrial biogenesis in axons

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    1. Tzu Huai Lin
    2. Dana M. Bis-Brewer
    3. Amy E. Sheehan
    4. Louise N. Townsend
    5. Daniel C. Maddison
    6. Stephan Züchner
    7. Gaynor A. Smith
    8. Marc R. Freeman
  • Live-imaging of astrocyte morphogenesis and function in zebrafish neural circuits

    Nature Neuroscience
    1. Jiakun Chen
    2. Kira E. Poskanzer
    3. Marc R. Freeman
    4. Kelly R. Monk
  • Trpml-mediated astrocyte microdomain ca2+ transients regulate astrocyte-tracheal interactions

    eLife
    1. Zhiguo Ma
    2. Marc R. Freeman
  • Glutathione S-Transferase Regulates Mitochondrial Populations in Axons through Increased Glutathione Oxidation

    Neuron
    1. Gaynor A. Smith
    2. Tzu Huai Lin
    3. Amy E. Sheehan
    4. Wynand Van der Goes van Naters
    5. Lukas J. Neukomm
    6. Hillary K. Graves
    7. Dana M. Bis-Brewer
    8. Stephan Züchner
    9. Marc R. Freeman
  • Neural JNK3 regulates blood flow recovery after hindlimb ischemia in mice via an Egr1/Creb1 axis

    Nature communications
    1. Shashi Kant
    2. Siobhan M. Craige
    3. Kai Chen
    4. Michaella M. Reif
    5. Heather Learnard
    6. Mark Kelly
    7. Amada D. Caliz
    8. Khanh Van Tran
    9. Kasmir Ramo
    10. Owen M. Peters
    11. Marc Freeman
    12. Roger J. Davis
    13. John F. Keaney
  • Polymodal Nociception in Drosophila Requires Alternative Splicing of TrpA1

    Current Biology
    1. Pengyu Gu
    2. Jiaxin Gong
    3. Ye Shang
    4. Fei Wang
    5. Kendra T. Ruppell
    6. Zhiguo Ma
    7. Amy E. Sheehan
    8. Marc R. Freeman
    9. Yang Xiang
  • Focal adhesion molecules regulate astrocyte morphology and glutamate transporters to suppress seizure-like behavior

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    1. Sukhee Cho
    2. Allie K. Muthukumar
    3. Tobias Stork
    4. Jaeda C. Coutinho-Budd
    5. Marc R. Freeman
  • Loss of Sarm1 does not suppress motor neuron degeneration in the SOD1G93A mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

    Human molecular genetics
    1. Owen M. Peters
    2. Elizabeth A. Lewis
    3. Jeannette M. Osterloh
    4. Alexandra Weiss
    5. Johnny S. Salameh
    6. Jake Metterville
    7. Robert H. Brown
    8. Marc R. Freeman
  • Transcription factor Pebbled/RREB1 regulates injury-induced axon degeneration

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    1. Jonathan E. Farley
    2. Thomas C. Burdett
    3. Romina Barria
    4. Lukas J. Neukomm
    5. Kevin P. Kenna
    6. John E. Landers
    7. Marc R. Freeman
  • Axon Death Pathways Converge on Axundead to Promote Functional and Structural Axon Disassembly

    Neuron
    1. Lukas J. Neukomm
    2. Thomas C. Burdett
    3. Andrew M. Seeds
    4. Stefanie Hampel
    5. Jaeda C. Coutinho-Budd
    6. Jonathan E. Farley
    7. Jack Wong
    8. Yonca B. Karadeniz
    9. Jeannette M. Osterloh
    10. Amy E. Sheehan
    11. Marc R. Freeman
  • Axon degeneration induces glial responses through Draper-TRAF4-JNK signalling

    Nature communications
    1. Tsai Yi Lu
    2. Jennifer M. MacDonald
    3. Lukas J. Neukomm
    4. Amy E. Sheehan
    5. Rachel Bradshaw
    6. Mary A. Logan
    7. Marc R. Freeman
  • The secreted neurotrophin spätzle 3 promotes glial morphogenesis and supports neuronal survival and function

    Genes and Development
    1. Jaeda C. Coutinho-Budd
    2. Amy E. Sheehan
    3. Marc R. Freeman
  • Attenuated traumatic axonal injury and improved functional outcome after traumatic brain injury in mice lacking Sarm1

    Brain
    1. Nils Henninger
    2. James Bouley
    3. Elif M. Sikoglu
    4. Jiyan An
    5. Constance M. Moore
    6. Jean A. King
    7. Robert Bowser
    8. Marc R. Freeman
    9. Robert H. Brown
  • Neuromodulators signal through astrocytes to alter neural circuit activity and behaviour

    Nature
    1. Zhiguo Ma
    2. Tobias Stork
    3. Dwight E. Bergles
    4. Marc R. Freeman
  • Prevalent presence of periodic actin-spectrin-based membrane skeleton in a broad range of neuronal cell types and animal species

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    1. Jiang He
    2. Ruobo Zhou
    3. Zhuhao Wu
    4. Monica A. Carrasco
    5. Peri T. Kurshan
    6. Jonathan E. Farley
    7. David J. Simon
    8. Guiping Wang
    9. Boran Han
    10. Junjie Hao
    11. Evan Heller
    12. Marc R. Freeman
    13. Kang Shen
    14. Tom Maniatis
    15. Marc Tessier-Lavigne
    16. Xiaowei Zhuang
  • Age-dependent TDP-43-mediated motor neuron degeneration requires GSK3, hat-trick, and xmas-2

    Current Biology
    1. Jemeen Sreedharan
    2. Lukas J. Neukomm
    3. Robert H. Brown
    4. Marc R. Freeman