WELCOME TO FLY LAB
Its all about Drosophila melanogaster, the Fruit Fly! You can find this beautiful species everywhere - in every continents, at your home, at the restaurant you are planning to visit at the weekend, and also in our LAB. Drosophila is one of the many model organisms used in biological research. ..............
we are working on....During embryogenesis, wound healing, metastasis and other important physiological and pathological processes cells can migrate in collectives. Specifically, collective cell migration drives tissue shape changes during organ formation, such as branching morphogenesis of the mammary gland and epithelial sheet movement during gastrulation. Importantly, cells also move as collective cohorts or strands during tumor invasion and metastasis. Our knowledge of the mechanism of cell migration is primarily based on single cell migration in vitro. In contrast, our understanding is quite limited when it comes to collective cell migration in vivo, especially how cells create and maintain the identity of the group while they are migrating. Studying collective cell migration is even harder in vivo as the migration occurs in tissues within the organism. With the vast reserve of genetic tools, the relative ease of study and, most importantly, the techniques available for studying cellular processes in vivo, Drosophila is an outstanding system to discover the mechanisms that regulate collective cell migration in living tissues. Hence, our broad research outlook is to study the underlying molecular mechanism(s) that create and regulate group identity and coordination in collective cell migration. We use modern genetic, molecular biological, biochemical and microscopic techniques to uncover the complex mechanisms that govern collective cell migration using the powerful model systems of border cell migration and egg chamber rotation during Drosophila ovary development. We have divided our immediate research goals into two broad aims:
The role of cytoskeleton: The cytoskeleton is unique to eukaryotic cells. It is a dynamic three-dimensional structure that fills the cytoplasm. This structure acts as both muscle and skeleton, for movement and stability. It is one of the most studied cellular structures but surprisingly not well studied in collective cell movement. Our plan is to study the regulation of both microtubule and actin structure. We are in the process of understanding MT structure dynamics and regulation during collective cell migration by two kinases. One, Par1 is a serine/threonine kinase essential for cell polarity. It phosphorylates Tau, a MT binding protein and may cause Alzheimer’s disease. Another serine/threonine kinase, Shaggy is involved in wingless signaling and is also thought to phosphorylate Tau. Side by side we are also looking at molecular mechanisms that control protrusion formation through actin cytoskeleton regulation. Singed, Drosophila homolog of the vertebrate Fascin, is overexpressed in border cells seemingly without any purpose and we want to know why. The role of Wingless (wg) signaling in egg chamber rotation: wg is a well-studied signaling network that is involved in tissue growth, polarity and patterning. We have found that wg is regulating egg chamber rotation and we want to study the role wg plays in egg chamber rotation. |