My laboratory has focused on using the powerful model Drosophila to address the problems of human neurodegenerative disease. Many genes and pathways for the brain are conserved, allowing discovery of pathways of disease. This work has highlighted many novel discoveries of players that promote and protect from brain degeneration, elucidating mechanisms and the foundations for … Continued
Our research focuses on the study of the cis-regulatory landscape of the human genome, particularly in the context of early development. This landscape includes, but is not restricted to, many of the thousands of genomic regions that are conserved (and ultraconserved) between human and other species and whose functions remain unknown. Our major interests are … Continued
Research in the Bezanilla lab aims to understand how molecules within cells impart geometric information leading to cell shape determination. Cell shape often stems from restrictions imposed by the extracellular environment. Eukaryotes can control this by building a wide variety of structures, ranging from bone and shell in animals to the carbohydrate-based cell wall in … Continued
Research in our lab focuses on regulation of gene expression by non-coding RNAs and chromatin. We study the biogenesis and function of piRNAs, one of the three major classes of small non-coding RNA that protects animal genomes against transposable elements. We investigate how piRNAs guide transcriptional repression and how nuage – the peculiar subcellular compartment … Continued
An exquisite molecular machine, the mitotic spindle, organizes and separates chromosomes in dividing cells, thereby ensuring equal partitioning of the genetic material. Our lab is reconstituting spindle functions using pure components and applying new tools for manipulating individual molecules to uncover how this machine operates. By physically probing the interactions between microtubules, protein filaments that … Continued
Sex chromosomes in male Drosophila have adopted opposing chromatin environments, with Y-chromosomes being epigenetically silenced through heterochromatin formation, and X-chromosomes being hyper-transcribed. Research in our lab capitalizes on newly evolving sex chromosomes in Drosophila, to study the molecular mechanisms driving sex chromosome differentiation at the genomic and epigenetic level, and their phenotypic consequences. Our research … Continued