Research
Regulation of Embryonic Patterning in Zebrafish
The vertebrate body grows from the neck down by the progressive addition of cells from a mesodermal progenitor population located at the most posterior end of the embryo. A major interest in the lab is to understand the mechanisms that regulate this process. Our focus is on the signaling factors that pattern and sustain the mesodermal progenitors, including Nodals, Wnts, Fgfs and Bmps, and their interaction with transcription factors that regulate the progenitors, particularly members of the T-box family. Recently (Szeto and Kimelman, 2006), we demonstrated that the position of the mesodermal progenitors along the body is regulated by a combination of Nodal and Bmp signals, which regulate a clock that tells the mesodermal progenitors when to commit to differentiation. Our current research involves the production of transgenic zebrafish that will allow us to understand how the fate and proliferation of the mesodermal progenitors is regulated.