Developmental Biologycellular and genetic regulatory mechanisms |
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The developmental biology program combines research activities centered in the Institute of Neuroscience with those in the Institute of Molecular Biology. Several laboratories (headed by Eisen, Kimmel, Postlethwait, Westerfield, and Weston) cooperate in a program of research concerning the molecular, genetic, and cellular analysis of development in the zebrafish. Other research activities in the molecular and genetic analysis of development address such issues as (1) generation of cell diversity in the Drosophila central nervous system (Doe); (2) cellular signalling mechanism and regulation of mating-type switching in yeast (George Sprague); (3) cell interaction and signalling during lineage specification in the nematode worm, C. elegans (Bowerman), and the mouse embryo (Weston), and hormonal regulation of programmed neuronal death during insect metamorphosis (Weeks).
Members of all of these laboratories actively share information and resources in this diverse and rapidly moving field. In addition to a graduate research training program, a weekly journal club and joint research group meetings, the developmental biologists participate in one day-long workshop-symposium each term, organized, in turn, by each laboratory group on some aspect of their research interests.