Project 171347

The penetration of the sperm cell into the dormant egg triggers the remarkable program of events that turns the egg into a miniature but living model of the adult, called an embryo. While surface observation might indicate a slow, plodding course of minute changes, if one were to peer into the activities of the cells, one would see extremely busy things taking place - small hormone like molecules being exchanged between cells, genetic information being duplicated and "read" by gene transcription machines that are used to make the building blocks of cells, as well as hundreds of thousands - indeed millions of other parallel processes occurring simultaneously. Our research is directed towards understanding one gene transcription machine called BCL-9/pygo. We are determining how this important molecular structure controls and is controlled to generate a bilaterally symmetric body, from a spherical egg.

investigating the role of the BCL-9/pygo gene transcription machine in vertebrate body axis development