Yoh Isogai

Yoh Isogai is a group leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre. His major research interest is the molecular and genetic framework of innate, genetically hardwired behaviours.

Previously as a postdoctoral fellow in Catherine Dulac’s lab at Harvard, Yoh identified nearly one hundred receptors in a mouse olfactory organ that detect ethologically-relevant odors in the wild, including social cues. The group now investigates the molecular and neural logic of how social cues are processed in the brain and the neural computations that in turn trigger specific social behaviours.

The second research interest of the Isogai lab is to understand how genes control social behaviour. His group applies single cell methods to study gene expression, including a method that he pioneered during his graduate study in Robert Tjian’s lab at University of California, Berkeley, to genetically hardwired circuits such as social behaviour circuits in rodents.