Education
Postdoctoral Fellowship: Neuroscience, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 2014
PhD: Neuroscience, Stanford University, 2008
Representative Recent Publications
Kim HD, Call T, Magazu S & Ferguson D (2017). Drug Addiction and Histone Code Alterations. Adv Exp Med Biol. Vol. 978, 127-143.
Ferguson D (2017). Cocaine Mediates the Cellular Mechanism of Satiation. Biol Psychiatry. Vol. 81(7), e47-e48.
Kim HD, Hesterman J, Call T, Magazu S, Keeley E, Armenta K, Kronman H, Neve RL, Nestler EJ & Ferguson D (2016). SIRT1 mediates depression-like behaviors in the nucleus accumbens. J Neurosci. Vol. 36(32), 8441-8452.
Ferguson D, Shao N, Heller E, Feng J, Neve R, Kim HD, Call T, Magazu S, Shen L & Nestler EJ (2015). SIRT1-FOXO3a regulate cocaine actions in the nucleus accumbens. J Neurosci. Vol. 35(7), 3100-11.
Feng J, Wilkinson M, Liu X, Purushothaman I, Ferguson D, Vialou V, Maze I, Shao N, Kennedy P, Koo J, Dias C, Laitman B, Stockman V, LaPlant Q, Cahill ME, Nestler EJ & Shen L (2015). Erratum to: Chronic cocaine-regulated epigenomic changes in mouse nucleus accumbens. Genome Biol. Vol. 16, 227.
Research Interests
Transcriptomics, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Gene environment interactions and epigenetics, Developmental, cell and molecular biology, Depression
Research Summary
Dr. Ferguson's research program integrates a wide range of molecular and behavioral approaches. Currently, we are evaluating the role of SIRT1 and its downstream targets as potential new candidates for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders by performing chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by genome-wide profiling (ChIP-seq) in nucleus accumbens (NAc) tissue from control and socially defeated stressed mice.