Joseph Watson, Ph.D.
Faculty Member
Professor & Associate Dean, Graduate Division of the College of Letters and Science
Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles
Biography
Dr. Watson received his Ph.D from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA in 1985 in Jay Gralla’s Laboratory in which he combined virology and protein biochemistry to identify early SV40 virus replication and transcription complexes associated with the nuclear matrix of eukaryotic cells. He then went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology of the nervous system in Dr. J. Gregor Sutcliffe’s lab at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where he began his initial studies of neurodegenerative diseases focusing on identifying novel genes relevant to Huntington’s Disease (HD). He returned to UCLA in 1989 as a member of the Mental Retardation Research Center and the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, studying synaptic targets of neurodegenerative diseases that include Parkinson’s Disease (PD), HD, and Alzheimer’s Disease. He has also served as the Vice Chair of the Neuroscience Undergraduate Interdepartmental Program for the UCLA campus and Outreach Program Director for the Brain Research Institute (BRI). He is also currently an Associate Dean in the Graduate Division.
Publications
A selected list of publications:
Sarafian Theodore A, Ryan Christopher M, Souda Puneet, Masliah Eliezer, Kar Upendra K, Vinters Harry V, Mathern Gary W, Faull Kym F, Whitelegge Julian P, Watson Joseph B Impairment of mitochondria in adult mouse brain overexpressing predominantly full-length, N-terminally acetylated human α-synuclein PloS one, 2013; 8(5): e63557.