Matthew B. Veldman, PhD

Assistant Professor

Locations

Cell Biology, Neurobiology & Anatomy

Contact Information

Education

Scientist, UCLA, Prof. William Yang’s Laboratory, 2018
Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA, Prof. Shuo Lin’s Laboratory, 2014
PhD, Neuroscience, University of Michigan, 2007
BS, Biochemistry, University of Minnesota, 1999

Biography

Dr. Veldman earned his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan in the Laboratory of Daniel Goldman studying the mechanisms of successful optic nerve regeneration in the zebrafish model organism. His studies were first to describe the importance of the KLF family of transcription factors, specifically KLF6 and KLF7, in nerve regeneration. This was followed by postdoctoral training in cardiovascular developmental biology in Shuo Lin’s laboratory at UCLA where he studied the endothelial cell fate transcription factor Etsrp/Etv2 and discovered its ability to transdifferentiate skeletal muscle cells into endothelial cells and drive endothelial cell differentiation from human embryonic stem cells. While in the Lin Laboratory, he developed an inducible Huntington’s disease model in zebrafish in collaboration with X. William Yang’s laboratory that highlighted the protective role of the N17 domain of huntingtin protein Exon 1 fragment. Dr. Veldman then joined the Yang laboratory to develop novel reporter mouse lines for sparse, genetically defined cell labeling to study cell morphology. The technology developed for this project, Mosaicism with Repeat Frameshift (MORF), is a powerful tool for labeling and manipulating sparse cells in vivo. These experiences have focused Dr. Veldman’s scientific interests on development, degeneration, and regeneration in the central nervous system and developing new genetic tools to study these processes.

Research Areas of Interest

Animals
Animals, Genetically Modified
Blood Vessels
Brain
Brain Mapping
Cells, Cultured
Disease Models, Animal
Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay
Embryo, Nonmammalian
Gene Expression Profiling
Gene Expression Regulation
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental

Research Interests

Our research is broadly interested in basic mechanisms of development, degeneration, and regeneration in the central nervous system with the goal of applying this knowledge to treat patients suffering from neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative conditions, or traumatic brain injuries. We use systems biology approaches and genetic screens to identify genes and pathways involved in the processes being studied and then use molecular-genetic and pharmacological tools, and new technologies to tease out targets for therapeutic intervention. Our initial focus is on applying modern molecular biological methods (such as CRISPR-Cas9, RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, etc.) to study the cell intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms of successful optic nerve regeneration in the zebrafish visual system and compare these mechanisms to those in mammals, which fail to regenerate and suffer from degeneration.

LCM-Seq for Retinal Cell Layer-Specific Responses During Optic Nerve Regeneration.

(Speer W, Veldman MB.) Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2636:311-321 PMID: 36881308 03/08/2023
A multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex.

(BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN).) Nature. 2021 Oct;598(7879):86-102 PMID: 34616075 PMCID: PMC8494634 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85116508250 10/08/2021
Morphological diversity of single neurons in molecularly defined cell types.

(Peng H, Xie P, Liu L, Kuang X, Wang Y, Qu L, Gong H, Jiang S, Li A, Ruan Z, Ding L, Yao Z, Chen C, Chen M, Daigle TL, Dalley R, Ding Z, Duan Y, Feiner A, He P, Hill C, Hirokawa KE, Hong G, Huang L, Kebede S, Kuo HC, Larsen R, Lesnar P, Li L, Li Q, Li X, Li Y, Li Y, Liu A, Lu D, Mok S, Ng L, Nguyen TN, Ouyang Q, Pan J, Shen E, Song Y, Sunkin SM, Tasic B, Veldman MB, Wakeman W, Wan W, Wang P, Wang Q, Wang T, Wang Y, Xiong F, Xiong W, Xu W, Ye M, Yin L, Yu Y, Yuan J, Yuan J, Yun Z, Zeng S, Zhang S, Zhao S, Zhao Z, Zhou Z, Huang ZJ, Esposito L, Hawrylycz MJ, Sorensen SA, Yang XW, Zheng Y, Gu Z, Xie W, Koch C, Luo Q, Harris JA, Wang Y, Zeng H.) Nature. 2021 Oct;598(7879):174-181 PMID: 34616072 PMCID: PMC8494643 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85116413344 10/08/2021
Lipidomics dataset of Danio rerio optic nerve regeneration model.

(Arcuri J, Veldman MB, Bhattacharya SK.) Data Brief. 2021 Aug;37:107260 PMID: 34377754 PMCID: PMC8327136 08/12/2021
Brainwide Genetic Sparse Cell Labeling to Illuminate the Morphology of Neurons and Glia with Cre-Dependent MORF Mice.

(Veldman MB, Park CS, Eyermann CM, Zhang JY, Zuniga-Sanchez E, Hirano AA, Daigle TL, Foster NN, Zhu M, Langfelder P, Lopez IA, Brecha NC, Zipursky SL, Zeng H, Dong HW, Yang XW.) Neuron. 2020 Oct 14;108(1):111-127.e6 PMID: 32795398 PMCID: PMC7572760 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85090058615 08/17/2020
Precise segmentation of densely interweaving neuron clusters using G-Cut.

(Li R, Zhu M, Li J, Bienkowski MS, Foster NN, Xu H, Ard T, Bowman I, Zhou C, Veldman MB, Yang XW, Hintiryan H, Zhang J, Dong HW.) Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 04;10(1):1549 PMID: 30948706 PMCID: PMC6449501 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85063996703 04/06/2019
Engineering vascularized skeletal muscle tissue with transcriptional factor ETV2-induced autologous endothelial cells.

(Yan G, Yan R, Chen C, Chen C, Zhao Y, Qin W, Veldman MB, Li S, Lin S.) Protein Cell. 2019 Mar;10(3):217-222 PMID: 29687363 PMCID: PMC6338622 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85045852223 04/25/2018
Molecular insights into cortico-striatal miscommunications in Huntington's disease.

(Veldman MB, Yang XW.) Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2018 Feb;48:79-89 PMID: 29125980 PMCID: PMC5825262 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85032950437 11/11/2017
Huntington's Disease: Nuclear Gatekeepers Under Attack.

(Veldman MB, Yang XW.) Neuron. 2017 Apr 05;94(1):1-4 PMID: 28384467 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85016944880 04/07/2017
The N17 domain mitigates nuclear toxicity in a novel zebrafish Huntington's disease model.

(Veldman MB, Rios-Galdamez Y, Lu XH, Gu X, Qin W, Li S, Yang XW, Lin S.) Mol Neurodegener. 2015 Dec 09;10:67 PMID: 26645399 PMCID: PMC4673728 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-84949559773 12/10/2015
ETV2 expression increases the efficiency of primitive endothelial cell derivation from human embryonic stem cells.

(Lindgren AG, Veldman MB, Lin S.) Cell Regen. 2015;4(1):1 PMID: 25780560 PMCID: PMC4318149 03/18/2015
Stem cells on fire: inflammatory signaling in HSC emergence.

(Veldman MB, Lin S.) Dev Cell. 2014 Dec 08;31(5):517-8 PMID: 25490260 12/10/2014

Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy (CBNA)