Research Overview

Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, our laboratory takes a molecular genetic approach to basic questions in developmental biology and neurogenetics:

• What are the molecular mechanisms by which cells interact to establish a spatial pattern of cell types?
• How are signals among cells integrated to coordinate organ formation?
• How do genes control the ability to execute stereotyped behavior?

Our major strategy is to identify mutations that make cells or animals misbehave and then to use a combination of molecular cloning and genetic analysis to study the functions of the genes defined by these mutations. We focus on intercellular signals and their transduction by the responding cell. Many of the genes we have identified are the nematode counterparts of human genes, and we expect that some of our findings will apply to human genes as well.