Jennifer Jahncke

Jennifer Jahncke

Postdoctoral Scholar

Oregon Health & Science University

About Me

Jennifer is a postdoc in the Wright Lab at the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. Under the mentorship of Dr. Kevin Wright she studies the role that the scaffolding protein dystroglycan plays in the structure and function of inhibitory synapses in the brain. Her goal is to further our understanding of the cognitive symptoms that are experienced by dystroglycanopathy patients. Jennifer is also interested in data science and science communication. In her free time Jennifer can be found hiking, crocheting, making art, and petting dogs.

Education

  • PhD in Neuroscience, 2024

    Oregon Health & Science University

  • BS in Psychology, 2014

    University of California, Davis

Projects

Science Communication - Science for non-scientists.

Science Around Us - Science is all around us. Learn about concepts in mathematics and neuroscience through the medium of photography and graphic design.

.js-id-sci-comm

The Cre-lox System: Conditional Gene Deletion

The introduction of conditional genetics represents a huge boon in the health sciences. It used to be that the only way to study the effect a gene had on the biology of a system was to “knock it out” - engineer a model (usually mouse) where the gene, or part of the gene, is missing entirely from the mouse’s genome.

Immunohistochemistry: Adding Color to the Brain

Have you ever wondered how we make these bright and beautiful images of proteins in the brain? It’s done using a technique called immunohistochemistry, which we also call IHC or immuno.

A Thread: Molecular Mechanisms of Non-ionotropic LTD

Preprint featuring one of the projects I worked on during my time as a research assistant! Here we start to put together the molecular signaling pathway downstream of non-ionotropic LTD and spine shrinkage.

Recent Posts

Antibody Performance R Shiny Application

My bread and butter technique as a neuroscientist is immunohistochemistry - using fluorescently conjugated antibodies to visualize protein localization in a fixed brain section. I’ve carved a niche for myself as the antibody whisperer.

Rigor & Reproducibility in Light Microscopy

In the fall I give a lecture to incoming neuroscience graduate students on how to perform light microscopy in a rigorous and reproducible manner. I wanted to share that presentation here for accessibility.

Pizza Week 2024: Web Scraping, GIS Data, and Cluster Analysis

It’s been a while since I first learned how to scrape websites and boy have I learned a lot since then. So as you may or may not be aware, I primarily use web scraping to get the most out of Portland’s food weeks.

Neurohackademy 2023: Calculating an Author's O-Index

Neurohackademy is an annual two-week long course offered at University of Washington in Seattle. The course covers some coding basics (python) and applications to neuroimaging. I attended the course in 2023 hoping to get some more neuroscience-centered coding experinece.

Heart Beats on Our Wedding Day

I love data, so I wanted to somehow plot my wedding day. My now-husband wore his Fitbit on his wrist and I wore mine on my ankle (you can see it in the picture below).

Contact