Dr Richard Adams

Morphogenetic cell movements during development

Early development is marked by many cells undergoing substantial reorganisation to create the form of the embryo. We are interested in the mechanisms that control and enact these movements. In the laboratory we are using time-lapse microscopy and custom-built software to trace and analyse the dynamics of morphogenesis in the zebrafish embryo. This allows us to visualise both where cells go and to ask questions about how these movements shape tissues.

In recent work, along with our collaborators Alexandre Kabla (Department of Engineering, Cambridge) and L. Mahadevan (Harvard), we have developed a theory to link cell behaviour to tissue morphogenesis (Blanchard et al 2009). Tissue tectonics is a framework with which to measure the rate of tissue deformation at a very fine spatial and temporal scale. Tissue morphogenesis is then subdivided into contributions caused by changes in cell shape and those caused by cell rearrangement, or intercalation. This approach is very powerful in allowing us to see variations in cell behaviour in time and space and to distinguish the bases of mutant phenotypes (Butler et al. 2009; Gorfinkiel et al. 2009). For the first time we have a definition and continuous measure for cell intercalation, a cellular mechanism central to many aspects of animal development.

We offer projects to look at all aspects of this process: the acquisition and analysis of high-resolution time-lapse movies; the development of probes to reveal how cells respond to developmental signals; investigation of the mechanisms of cell rearrangements during morphogenesis; the development of analytical methods to measure and compare morphogenetic mechanisms. We are particularly interested in the development of the central nervous system during gastrulation and neurulation.

Cellular morphogenesis of the vertebrate central nervous system

My laboratory is interested in the morphogenetic development of early gastrula and neurula stages (England et al. 2006). We use zebrafish as a developmental model. We collect 3D time-lapse movies of embryos developing then perform quantitative analyses of the patterns of movements and reorganisation of cells that give rise to the emerging form of the embryo. We can compare the development of mutant and experimental animals with the normal situation using these quantitative assays and thus begin to understand the relationship between proteins and cell behaviour.

Sources of funding:  

BBSRC & EPSRC

Collaborators:

• Benedicte Sanson 
• Octavian Voiculescu