Professor

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Brief Description of Research

Neurodegenerative disorders; Sexual differentiation of the brain; Cognitive development of children.

Research Interests

Professor McLennan’s research team have discovered that a protein called MIS/AMH is a multi-dimensional regulator of the brain, with very distinct actions that vary with the stage of the life cycle.

During development, AMH is a male specific hormone that is produced from the testes.  In mice, it is responsible for some of the male biases in non-reproductive behaviours, such explorative tendency.  Boys develop more slowly than girls, both physically and cognitively.  Their initial experiments suggest that this sex difference in maturation is due to MIS.  Conditions such as ADHD and autism have a male bias and atypical rates of development.  They are therefore currently exploring the potential relationship between MIS and these conditions.

In adults, AMH is produced in the brain and from both the ovaries and testes.  As women enter menopause, their ovaries cease to produce AMH.  The function of the MIS in the blood of adults is unknown, although our initial data points to it being involved in the maintenance of major blood vessels and possibly the brain.  Many neurodegenerative conditions exhibit a sex bias in either their frequency or their severity.  The team is therefore particularly interested in the relationship between AMH and these conditions.

The group’s philosophy embraces integrative science, and they use a broad range of molecular, cellular and whole animal techniques.  The research team contains scientists with diverse expertise, thus giving students the option of undertaking discipline-based research or cross-disciplinary experiments.  The research has been strengthened by a series of short- and longer-term collaborations with laboratories in New Zealand and overseas.

This research is funded by the Marsden Fund and by NERF (FRST).

Publications