Dana Shaw

Research Interests:

Globally each year, between 250,000 and 500,000 spinal cord injuries occur annually, with 18,000 new spinal cord injuries occurring annually within the United States alone. Damage to the spinal cord leads to the loss of both sensory and motor function downstream of the sight of injury. Although many options exist for improving the quality of life for patients living with spinal cord injuries, there are few to no options for regaining lost neural function. However, the capacity to regenerate neural tissue after injury is not distributed equally across species. Many lower vertebrates, including zebrafish, are capable of complete recovery following a complete spinal cord injury. Yet, we still have a very poor understanding of what gives zebrafish this remarkable capacity to regenerate after spinal cord transection. Considering that zebrafish are closely related to humans, with a similar suite of genetic, molecular, and cellular tools, our goal is to understand what makes the zebrafish spinal cord so regenerative.

The ongoing projects in the lab seek to address these overarching questions:
1 – What cells are responding to spinal cord injury and driving spinal cord regeneration?
2 – How does the environment shape immune cell identities and functions?
3 – How does the immune response differ between regenerative zebrafish and non-regenerative mammals?
4 – Can we reprogram cells within the mammalian spinal cord to mimic regenerative cell types?

Biography:

• Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame Biological Sciences
• Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine (2019-2025)
• Graduate Student, University of Utah School of Medicine (2013-2019)

Education:

• Ph.D. Human Genetics,University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT
• B.S. Biochemistry, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

Recent Papers:

• Klatt Shaw D, Zhou L, Muraleedharan Saraswathy V, McAdow R, Park D, Johnson AN, and Mokalled MH. (2026). Elevated phagocytic capacity directs innate spinal cord repair. Cell Reports. DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117482, PMID: 42247297.
• Weinholtz CA, Zhou L, Muraleedharan Saraswathy V, Xu Y, Klatt Shaw D, McAdow R, Park D, Shin J, Solnica-Krezel L, Johnson AN, Mokalled MH (2026). Transient activation of potent progenitor cells is required for spinal cord regeneration. biorxiv. 
  DOI: 10.64898/2026.02.04.703854, PMID: 41924399.
• Zhou L, McAdow R, Yamada H, Burris B, Klatt Shaw D, Oonk K, Poss KD, and Mokalled MH. (2023). Progenitor derived glia are required for spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish. Development. DOI: 10.1242/dev.201162, PMID: 37213080.
• Klatt Shaw D and Mokalled MH. (2021). Efficient CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis for neurobehavioral screening in adult zebrafish. G3 (Genes, Genomes, Genetics). DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkab089, PMID: 33742663.
• Klatt Shaw D*, Saraswathy V*, Zhou L*, McAdow R, Burris B, Li T, Morris S, Dietmann S, Zhang B, and Mokalled MH. (2021). Localized EMT reprograms glial progenitors to promote spinal cord repair. Developmental Cell. DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2021.01.017, PMID: 33609461.
• Wike C, Guo Y, Tan M, Nakamura R, Klatt Shaw D, Durand NC, Aiden EL, Vaquerizas J, Grunwald DJ, Takeda H, Cairns BR. (2021). Chromatin architecture transitions from zebrafish sperm through early embryogenesis. Genome Research.
  DOI: 10.1101/gr.269860.120, PMID: 34006569.
• Arveseth CD, Happ JT, Hedeen DS, Zhu J, Capener JL, Klatt Shaw D, Deshpande I, Liang J, Xu J, Stubben SL, Nelson IB, Walker MF, Krogan NJ, Grunwald DJ, Huttenhain R, Manglik A, and Myers BR. (2021). Smoothened Transduces Hedgehog Signals via Activity-Dependent Sequestration of PKA Catalytic Subunits. PLoS Biology. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001191, PMID: 33886552.
• Chagovetz AA, Ritchie E, Klatt Shaw D, Hoshijima K, and Grunwald DJ. (2020). Ryanodine Receptor isotype interactions contribute to muscle fiber type function and development. Disease Models and Mechanisms.
  DOI: 10.1242/dmm.038844, PMID: 31383689.

Selected as Disease Models and Mechanisms Editor’s Choice

• Hoshijima K, Jurynec M*, Klatt Shaw D*, Jacobi AM, Behlke MA, and Grunwald DJ. (2019). Highly efficient methods for generating deletion mutations and F0 embryos that lack gene function in zebrafish. Developmental Cell. 
  DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2019.10.004, PMID: 31708433. 

Highlighted on Faculty of 1000

• Klatt Shaw D*, Gunther D*, Jurynec M, Chagovetz AA, Ritchie E, and Grunwald DJ. (2018). Intracellular calcium mobilization is required for Sonic hedgehog signaling. Developmental Cell. DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2018.04.013, PMID: 29754802.
  Highlighted in Best of Developmental Cell 2018

View all of Dana Klatt Shaw's Publications

Research Areas:

• Regenerative Neuroimmunology
• Spinal Cord Injury
• Novel Tool Development in Zebrafish