Jeremy Seto
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Adjunct Professor
Jeremy Seto was born in New York City until he was ignominiously transplanted to New Jersey, where he would spend his formative years. As a student at Rutgers University, he double majored in the Biological Sciences and Psychology. With an interest in the behavioral science, he conducted his undergraduate Biology research in physiological ecology and behavioral endocrinology. In the Psychology department, he took part in behavioral pharmacology research. Jeremy attended the Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University and earned a Ph.D. in Neurosience. As a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, his research turned towards Systems Biology as he undertook projects in viral immunology. Science has always been a matter of communication, revision and extension. With this idea in mind, he entered as an Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at the New York City College of Technology – The City University of New York. As an instructor, he continues to bring the most modern techniques to his students and attempts to instruct using authentic research as a means to demonstrating the core scientific principles and practicalities of the field.
Maternal Immune activation is a paradigm where pregnant rodents are administered an environmental factor resulting in an immune/inflammatory response. In utero fetuses developing in such an environment result in offspring with behavioral and gene expression abnormalities reminsicent of human neuropsychiatric disease as a result of exposure to maternal cytokines. My lab has demonstrated that infection with influenza, exposure to immune agonists (polyI:C) and stress create a similar in utero environment. The major biochemical change that is the focus of the lab is at the interface of Serotonin and Glutamatergic systems. Downstream effects involve notable epigenetic alterations which subsequently result in the gene expression changes. Our lab seeks to better understand the developmental abnormalities that occur in response to these environmental risks and development of interventions towards the underlying mechanisms of these alterations.