Yelena Althshuller - Research Tech. Yue Zhang - Graduate Student A main focus for our lab is a particular period of early mammalian development known as gastrulation and early neurulation.
Gastrulation represents a critical time in embryogenesis.
A large number of poorly understood human genetic and epigenetic developmental abnormalities arise during this time, and we hope eventually to gain insight into them by increasing our understanding of the basic mechanisms involved in forming the pattern of mammalian embryos. Second, the embryonic axes become specified, meaning that cells within a germ layer become different from each other according to their position along the length, depth, or width of the embryo. The events that take place during this period are poorly understood from any prospective. Over the long term, we are using a combination of cell biological, molecular biological, and in vivo experimental approaches to address current questions and to define new ones. Experiments in progress include analysis of the gene structures, cloning additional homologs, misexpressing wild type and mutant forms of the genes using transgenic technology, and using homologous recombination to inactivate them in order to study their in vivo roles.