Jace Jones-Tabah is the Molecular Pharmacology Highlighted Trainee Author for the December 2021 issue. Dr. Jones-Tabah was a predoctoral trainee in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University, working under the mentorship of Dr. Terry Hébert and Dr. Paul Clarke. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Fon and Dr. Ziv Gan-Or.  The Molecular Pharmacology article that earned his selection as a Highlighted Trainee Author is titled “High-Content Single-Cell FRET Imaging of Cultured Striatal Neurons Reveals Novel Cross-Talk in the Regulation of Nuclear Signalling by PKA and ERK1/2” and is available at https://doi.org/10.1124/molpharm.121.000290.

Dr. Jones-Tabah’s PhD research centered on the use of genetically encoded fluorescent biosensors and other imaging tools to dissect GPCR-dependent signalling pathways, both in cell culture systems and in vivo animal models. His work focused both on the development of new approaches, and their application to study signalling mediated by the dopamine D1 receptor, which is abundantly expressed in striatal neurons and is an important therapeutic target in Parkinson’s disease.

In the paper highlighted here Dr. Jones-Tabah used high-content confocal microscopy and genetically encoded biosensors to image signalling responses from thousands of individual neurons in culture. The work both puts forward a novel approach for studying inter-cellular variability in signalling pathway activation and uncovers novel aspects of nuclear signalling mediated by the D1 receptor. The authors hope that this research will inspire others to think similarly about the role of cellular heterogeneity when studying intracellular signalling and drug responses.

When not in the lab, Jace enjoys spending time with friends and family, cooking, eating and playing music. He also enjoys the outdoors and likes to go camping, hiking or skiing in the mountains around Montreal.