Dr. Anne E. West is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Duke University School of Medicine. Her laboratory investigates the mechanisms and functions of stimulus-regulated gene transcription in brain development and behavioral plasticity. The goal of research in the West lab is to elucidate how transcriptional regulatory factors coordinate neuronal adaptations to the environment under physiologically normal conditions as well as to determine how abnormalities in transcriptional regulatory processes may contribute to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. Her recent work uses CRISPR/dCas9-based epigenome editing to ¬¬test hypotheses of how chromatin state and structure modulate activity-regulated gene transcription and neuronal plasticity in the brain.