About Dr Thomas Butts
I'm a developmental neurobiologist interested in how the brain develops and how this development has evolved over the last 500 or so million years. I teach embryology, neuroanatomy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology across the medical curriculum.
After reading cell biology at Durham, my PhD explored the evolution of the homeobox genes in animals, which are crucial in building animal embryos, under the supervision of Dr David Ferrier (now in St Andrews) and Prof Peter Holland at Oxford, where I was also a college lecturer at St Catherine's College. From there, I moved to work as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof Richard Wingate, Prof Andrew Lumsden, and Prof Anthony Graham at King's College London on the development and evolution of the hindbrain.
My first teaching post was as a lecturer in neurobiology on the Nanchang Joint Programme at QMUL, and before moving to Sunderland, I was programme director for the BSc (Hons) Anatomy degree at the University of Liverpool.
Teaching and supervision
I'm a Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience in the School of Medicine and the theme lead for Neuroscience. I'm also Deputy Phase 1 Lead, the School's Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion lead, and a personal tutor.
I teach molecular biology, genetics, genomics, embryology, neuroanatomy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology across the medical curriculum.
Interests
My interests are:
- Development biology of the cerebellum
- Developmental evolution of the cerebellum
- Medulloblastoma cancer biology
- Human brain development.
Research
I am interested in the molecular control of neurogenesis and its evolution across the vertebrate phylogeny. In particular, I work on the cerebellum, which contains ~80% of the neurons in the brain, and exhibits a huge variety of morphological forms across vertebrates. As such, it's a great model system for asking how complex, foliated brains evolved. Unsurprisingly given the huge numbers of neurons produced during development, cerebellar progenitors also give rise to the most common paediatric brain tumour, medulloblastoma.
My research aims to understand the molecular control of progenitor biology in the cerebellum, and through this to illustrate both how cerebellar development has evolved, and also how it can go awry during tumourigenesis, principally using a combination of comparative genomics and genetic manipulations in the chick embryo.
I am also interested in human brain development and maturation across the life span, and collaborate with the School of Law to explore the implications of human critical periods and myelinations patterns during development for the legal system in relation to juvenile sentencing.