Leadership

James A.J. Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Imaging Scientist

Scientific Director, WUCCI
Professor, Departments of Neuroscience, Cell Biology & Physiology and Biomedical Engineering

Email: fitzp@wustl.edu, Tel: +1 (314) 747-0838

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Biography

James Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., joined the School of Medicine on June 1st 2015 as the inaugural Scientific Director of the Washington University Center for Cellular Imaging (WUCCI) and as an Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology & Physiology. He was promoted to Full Professor in 2019 and was awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Imaging Scientist award in 2020. Prior to his relocation to Washington University, he was Senior Director of Biophotonics and Strategic Technology Initiatives at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA.

Dr. Fitzpatrick completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Kings College, London and undertook graduate training in optical physics at the University of Bristol also in the United Kingdom. During his Ph.D. he designed and developed a novel injection seeded optical parametric oscillator (OPO) laser system for the study of nuclear hyperfine structure in the excited electronic states of gas phase free radical species. After completing his doctorate at the University of Bristol, he moved to the United States as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. There he shifted his focus to study biological molecules such as peptide mimics and their micro-solvated clusters in the gas-phase using high-resolution fluorescence spectroscopy. In his second post-doc at Carnegie Mellon University, also in Pittsburgh, he spent his time studying protein-protein interactions using tools such as fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). After completing his post-doctoral training, he joined the Carnegie Mellon National Technology Center for Networks and Pathways, an NIH funded Roadmap initiative whose mandate was to develop fluorescent probe and imaging informatics technologies to study networks and pathways in living cells.

Dr. Fitzpatrick’s primary research interests lie in the integration and application of multi-scale optical and charged particle imaging technologies — specifically, biological applications of ion microscopy, development of correlative 3D light and electron microscopy approaches, and new computational tools to visualize and manipulate large-scale multi-dimensional datasets.

Awards, Honors & Academic Memberships

Selected Publications

• Wong NR, Mohan J, Kopecky BJ, Guo S, Du L, Leid J, Feng G, Lokshina I, Dmytrenko O, Luehmann H, Bajpai G, Ewald L, Bell L, Patel N, Bredemeyer A, Weinheimer CJ, Nigro JM, Kovacs A, Morimoto S, Bayguinov PO, Fisher MR, Stump WT, Greenberg M, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Epelman S, Kreisel D, Sah R, Liu Y, Hu H, Lavine KJ. Resident cardiac macrophages mediate adaptive myocardial remodeling. Immunity, July 21, 2021; S1074-7613(21)00289-2.
• Radyk MD, Spatz LB, Peña BL, Brown JW, Burclaff J, Cho CJ, Kefalov Y, Shih CC, Fitzpatrick JA, Mills JC. ATF3 induces RAB7 to govern autodegradation in paligenosis, a conserved cell plasticity program. EMBO Reports, July 26, 2021; e51806.
• Payne SA, Joens MS, Chung H, Skigen N, Frank A, Gattani S, Vaughn K, Schwed A, Nester M, Bhattacharyya A, Iyer G, Davis B, Carlquist J, Patel H, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Rutherford MA. Maturation of heterogeneity in afferent synapse ultrastructure in the mouse cochlea. Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience, June 17, 2021; 13:678575.
• Brioschi S, Wang WL, Peng V, Wang M, Shchukina I, Greenberg ZJ, Bando JK, Jaeger N, Czepielewski RS, Swain A, Mogilenko DA, Beatty WL, Bayguinov P, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Schuettpelz LG, Fronick CC, Smirnov I, Kipnis J, Shapiro VS, Wu GF, Gilfillan S, Cella M, Artyomov MN, Kleinstein SH, Colonna M. Heterogeneity of meningeal B cells reveals a lymphopoietic niche at the CNS borders. Science, June 3, 2021; eabf9277.
• Newberry EP, Strout GW, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Davidson NO. Liver-specific deletion of Mttp versus Tm6sf2 reveals distinct defects in stepwise VLDL assembly. Journal of Lipid Research, April 26, 2021; 62:100080.
• Zarei A, Ballard A, Cox L, Bayguinov P, Harris T, Davis JL, Roper P, Fitzpatrick J, Faccio R, Veis DJ. Osteolineage depletion of mitofusin2 enhances cortical bone formation in female mice. Bone, July, 2021; 148:115941.
• Fox GC, Su X, Davis JL, Xu Y, Kwakwa KA, Ross MH, Fontana F, Xiang J, Esser AK, Cordell E, Pagliai K, Dang HX, Sivapackiam J, Stewart SA, Maher CA, Bakewell SJ, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Sharma V, Achilefu S, Veis DJ, Lanza GM, Weilbaecher KN. Targeted therapy to β3 integrin reduces chemoresistance in breast cancer bone metastases. Molecular Cancer Therapy, June,2021; 20:1183-1198.
• Pandey KK, Bera S, Shi K, Rau MJ, Oleru AV, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Engelman AN, Aihara H, Grandgenett DP. Cryo-EM structure of the Rous sarcoma virus octameric cleaved synaptic complex intasome. Communications Biology, March 12, 2021; 4:330.
• Burns CH, Yau B, Rodriguez A, Triplett J, Maslar D, An YS, van der Welle REN, Kossina RG, Fisher MR, Strout GW, Bayguinov PO, Veenendaal T, Chitayat D, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Klumperman J, Kebede MA, Asensio CS. Pancreatic β-cell–specific deletion of VPS41 causes diabetes due to defects in insulin secretion. Diabetes, February 1, 2021; 70:436-448. 
• Ruben EA, Rau MJ, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Di Cera E. Cryo-EM structures of human coagulation factors V and Va. Blood, June 3, 2021; 137:3137-3144.
• Bailey AL, Dmytrenko O, Greenberg L, Bredemeyer AL, Ma P, Liu J, Penna V, Winkler ES, Sviben S, Brooks E, Nair AP, Heck KA, Rali AS, Simpson L, Saririan M, Hobohm D, Stump WT, Fitzpatrick JA, Xie X, Zhang X, Shi PY, Hinson JT, Gi WT, Schmidt C, Leuschner F, Lin CY, Diamond MS, Greenberg MJ, Lavine KJ. SARS-CoV-2 infections human engineered heart tissues and models COVID-19 myocarditis. JACC: Basic to Translational Science, April, 2021; 6:331-345.
• Deng Z, Zhao Y, Feng J, Zhang J, Zhao H, Rau MJ, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Hu H, Yuan P. Cryo-EM structure of a proton-activated chloride channel TMEM206. Science Advances, February, 2021; 7:eabe5983.
• Rustenhoven J, Drieu A, Mamuladze T, de Lima KA, Dykstra T, Wall M, Papadopoulos Z, Kanamori M, Salvador AF, Baker W, Lemieux M, Da Mesquita S, Cugurra A, Fitzpatrick J, Sviben S, Kossina R, Bayguinov P, Townsend RR, Zhang Q, Erdmann-Gilmore P, Smirnov I, Lopes MB, Herz J, Kipnis J. Functional characterization of the dural sinuses as a neuroimmune interface. Cell, February 18, 2021; 184:1000-1016.e27.
• Guang Y, Davis AL, McGrath TM, Pham CTN, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Setton LA. Size-dependent effective diffusivity in healthy human and porcine joint synovium. Annals Biomedical Engineering, April, 2021; 49:1245-1256. 
• Bayguinov PO, Fisher MR, Fitzpatrick JAJ. Assaying three-dimensional cellular architecture using x-ray tomographic and correlated imaging approaches. Journal of Biological Chemistry, November 13, 2021; 295:15782-15793.
• Deng Z, Maksaev G, Schlegel AM, Zhang J, Rau M,Fitzpatrick JAJ, Haswell ES, Yuan P. Structural mechanism for gating of a eukaryotic mechanosensitive channel of small conductance. Nature Communications, July 23, 2020; 11:3690. 
• Deng Z, Maksaev G, Rau M, Xie Z, Hu H, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Yuan P. Gating of human TRPv3 in a lipid bilayer. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, July, 2020; 27:635-644.
• Pavlovic Djuranovic S, Erath J, Andrews RJ, Bayguinov PO, Chung JJ, Chalker DL, Fitzpatrick JA, Moss WN, Szczesny P, Djuranovic S. Plasmodium falciparum translational machinery condones polyadenosine repeats. eLife. May 29, 2020; 9:e57799.
• Deng Z, He Z, Maksaev G, Bitter RM, Rau M, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Yuan P. Cryo-EM structures of the ATP release channel pannexin 1. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, April, 2020; 27:373-381.
• Hervas R, Rau MJ, Park Y, Zhang W, Murzin AG, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Scheres SHW, Si K. Cryo-EM structure of a neuronal functional amyloid implicated in memory persistence in Drosophila. Science, March 13, 2020; 367:1230-1234.
• Krauss JL, Roper PM, Ballard A, Shih CC, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Cassat JE, Ng PY, Pavlos NJ, Veis DJ. Staphylococcus aureus infects osteoclasts and replicates intracellularly. MBio, October 15, 2019; 10:e02447-19.
• Guang Y, McGrath TM, Klug NR, Nims RJ, Shih CC, Bayguinov PO, Guilak F, Pham CTN, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Setton LA. Combined experimental approach and finite element modeling of small molecule transport through joint synovium to measure effective diffusivity. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, April 1, 2020; 142:0410101-8.
• Yang Z, Yan H, Dai W, Jing J, Yang Y, Mahajan S, Zhou Y, Li W, Macaubas C, Mellins ED, Shih CC, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Faccio R. Tmem178 negatively regulates store-operated calcium entry in myeloid cells via association with STIM1. Journal of Autoimmunity, July, 2019; 101:94-108.
• Kim KX, Payne S, Yang-Hood A, Li SZ, Davis B, Carlquist J, V-Ghaffari B, Gantz JA, Kallogjeri D, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Ohlemiller KK, Hirose K, Rutherford MA. Vesicular glutamatergic transmission in noise-induced loss and repair of cochlear ribbon synapses. Journal of Neuroscience, June 5, 2019; 39:4434-4447.
• Robles H, Park S, Joens MS, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Craft CS, Scheller EL. Characterization of the bone marrow adipocyte niche with three-dimensional electron microscopy. Bone, January, 2019; 118:89-98.
• Rogers SC, Dosier LB, McMahon TJ, Zhu H, Timm D, Zhang H, Herbert J, Atallah J, Palmer GM, Cook A, Ernst M, Prakash J, Terng M, Towfighi P, Doctor R, Said A, Joens MS, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Hanna G, Lin, X, Reisz JA, Nemkov T, D’Alessandro A, Doctor A. Red blood cell phenotype fidelity following glycerol cryopreservation optimized for research purposes. PLoS One. December 21, 2019; 13:e0209201.
• Cheruiyot A, Li S, Nickless A, Roth R, Fitzpatrick JAJ, You Z. Compound C inhibits nonsense-mediated RNA decay independently of AMPK. PLoS One. October 5, 2018; 13:e0204978.
• Strubberg AM, Veronese Paniagua DA, Zhao T, Dublin L, Pritchard T, Bayguinov PO, Fitzpatrick JAJ, Madison BB. The zinc finger transcription factor PLAGL2 enhances stem cell fate and activates expression of ASCL2 in intestinal epithelial cells. Stem Cell Reports. July 9, 2018; pii: S2213- 6711(18)30272-8.
• Baygionov PO, Oakley DM, Shih CC, Geanon DJ, Joens MS, Fitzpatrick JAJ. Modern laser scanning confocal microscopy. Current Protocols in Cytometry, July, 2018; 85:e39. doi: 10.1002/cpcy.39.
• Hoshi M, Reginesi A, Joes MS, Fitzpatrick JAJ, McNeill H, Jain S.  Reciprocal spatiotemporally controlled apoptosis regulates Wolffian duct cloaca fusion. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, January 11, 2018; pii: ASN.2017040380.
• Shih CC, Oakley DM, Joens MS, Roth RA, Fitzpatrick JAJ. Non-linear optical imaging of extracellular matrix proteins. Methods in Cell Biology, 2018; 143:57-78.