About

Stephen C. Harrison is a Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology who played a central role in guiding the Harvard Biochemical Sciences Tutorial program for decades, including serving as Head Tutor from 1972-1996. His contributions emphasize the importance of learning how to think about scientific problems and how discoveries emerge from evidence. Harrison has been involved in mentoring students through the tutorial program, which focuses on developing intellectual relationships with practicing scientists, reading research papers, and discussing experiments and scientific concepts. His work has helped shape the educational approach that emphasizes discussion, mentorship, and engagement with primary scientific literature, fostering critical thinking and scientific inquiry among undergraduate students.

Research topics

• Biology
• Genetics
• Neuroscience
• Cell biology
• Medicine
• Anatomy
• Computational biology
• Pathology
• Virology
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Author Correction: Single-cell atlas of the transcriptome and chromatin accessibility in the human retina

  Nature Genetics · 2026-02-18

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Why hasn’t genetics taught us more about schizophrenia?

  The Transmitter · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Lynn Landmesser (1943–2024): A pioneer in developmental neurobiology

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-05-28

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Lynn Landmesser, whose studies transformed our view of how neurons find the proper partners on which to form synapses, died at the age of 80 in November 2024. Using elegant electrophysiological methods, she showed that specificity is apparent from the earliest times that connections are established in both autonomic and motor systems. Her work overturned the idea that synaptic connectivity arises by gradual refinement of initially nonspecific patterns and thereby laid the groundwork for molecular analysis of the factors that guide axons to and connect them with their targets.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Altered proportions of retinal cell types and distinct visual codes in rodents occupying divergent ecological niches

  Current Biology · 2025-03-04 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Vertebrate retinas share a basic blueprint comprising 5 neuronal classes arranged according to a common wiring diagram. Yet, vision is aligned with species differences in behavior and ecology, raising the question of how evolution acts on this circuit to adjust its computational characteristics. We address that problem by comparing the thalamic visual code and retinal cell composition in closely related species occupying different niches: Rhabdomys pumilio, which are day-active murid rodents, and nocturnal laboratory mice (Mus musculus). Using high-density electrophysiological recordings, we compare visual responses at both single-unit and population levels in the thalamus of these two species. We find that Rhabdomys achieves a higher spatiotemporal resolution visual code through the selective expansion of information channels characterized by non-linear spatiotemporal summation. Comparative analysis of single-cell transcriptomic atlases reveals that this difference originates with the increased relative abundance of retinal bipolar and ganglion cell types supporting OFF and ON-OFF responses. These findings demonstrate that evolution may drive changes in neural computation by adjusting the proportions of shared cell types rather than inventing new types and show the power of matching high-density physiological recordings with transcriptomic cell atlases to study evolution in the brain.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What U.S. science stands to lose without international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers

  The Transmitter · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Thanks to new technologies, neuroscientists have more direct access to the human brain than ever before

  The Transmitter · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Core transcription programs controlling injury-induced neurodegeneration of retinal ganglion cells

  Neuron · 2024-07-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Is it time to worry about brain chimeras?

  The Transmitter · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Core transcription programs controlling injury-induced neurodegeneration of retinal ganglion cells

  Neuron · 2024-07-01 · 9 citations

  erratumOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Comprehensive Single-Cell Atlas of the Mouse Retina

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01NS076467

  NIH · $9.4M · 2016

• NIH Grant R01NS029172

  NIH · $2.5M · 2006

• NIH Grant P30NS062685

  NIH · $13.7M · 2019

• NIH Grant U24NS063931

  NIH · $4.7M · 2013

• NIH Grant R01AG032322

  NIH · $1.7M · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Karthik Shekhar

  University of California, Berkeley

  88 shared

• R. Mark Grady

  St. Louis Children's Hospital

  64 shared

• Jeff W. Lichtman

  Harvard University

  48 shared

• Aviv Regev

  Broad Institute

  45 shared

• Wenjun Yan

  Stanford University

  42 shared

• Masahito Yamagata

  Harvard University

  41 shared

• Guoping Feng

  Broad Institute

  37 shared

• Kevin P. Campbell

  University of Florida

  37 shared

Labs

• Harvard’s Biochemical Sciences Tutorial ProgramPI

Education

• B.A., Biochemistry and Psychology

  Yale University

  1970

• Ph.D., Neuroscience

  Harvard University

Awards & honors

• 2024 Gerard Prize from the Society for Neuroscience