Developmental Regulation by TGF-b Member Growth Factors
(Key words: BMP signaling, mouse, Xenopus, ES cells, development, gene regulatory network, transcription)
Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) are key players in a multitude of cell signaling events, including specification and development of germ cells, dorsal-ventral (D-V) patterning of the body axes, early patterning of the central nervous system, and development of virtually every organ of the body. Being involved in so many different developmental events, it begs the following questions. How do seemingly interchangeable BMP signaling components elicit widely different outputs in different cell types? What roles does BMP signaling play in each of these different settings? At the systems level, how does BMP signaling integrate with gene regulatory networks to control development? To address these questions it is important to determine 1) when and where BMP signaling is activated during development, 2) which target genes are regulated by BMP signaling and 3) what the structural organization of cis-regulatory element regulating the process is. We address these questions using Xenopus and mouse animal models as well as using mouse and human ES cells.
GENE REGULATORY NETWORKS (GRNS):
Our goal is to build transcriptional GRNs regulating vertebrate endoderm/mesoderm formation so that someday we learn to respecify developmental fates using reverse engineering approaches.
ES CELL DIFFERENTIATION
We examine the roles of growth factors on ES cell differentiation. In order to optimize ES cell differentiation procedures, microfluiditic platforms are used to create specialized microenvironments (e.g., gradient) for stem cells.
