(Artist:
Katharine S. Liu) |
Research Overview
Using the nematode Caenorhabditis
elegans, our laboratory
takes a molecular genetic approach to basic questions in
biology:
- How are the properties of
an organism -its development, physiology and
behavior- encoded in its genome?
- How are signals among cells
integrated to coordinate organ formation?
- How do genes control the
ability to execute stereotyped behavior?
- How does behavior evolve?
- What changes in the nervous
system occur during sleep?
- How do cells migrate
accurately?
Our major strategy is to perturb the
activity of one or more genes and measure how cells or
animals misbehave to infer gene function and genetic
pathways. We measure gene expression by RNA-seq and
transgenic reporters; we measure behavior using automated
systems and optogenetics. We focus on intercellular
signals and their transduction by
the responding cell into transcriptional outputs. Many of
the genes we have identified are the
nematode counterparts of human genes, and we expect that
some of our
findings will apply to human genes as well. Nematodes are
major health and agricultural problems, so we focus on
parasite relevant biology such as dauer/infective juvenile
development, using genomics and molecular
genetics.
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