Supervisor: Sarah Bray
How are Notch signals decoded by developing tissues?
To make and organize tissues, cells need to communicate with each other and to correctly decipher the information they receive –mistakes are at the root of many inherited diseases and cancers. Our research has a focus on the Notch pathway, which provides key information during tissue development and maintenance. A critical end-result from Notch activity is that genes are turned on; our goal has been to discover how this occurs accurately in developing animals. We have recently developed several cutting-edge strategies to visualize key events in real time within living embryos and tissues. PhD projects would build on these tools to address key questions about how Notch signals are decoded by cells in different developmental processes, such as neurogenesis.
Relevant references:
1. Bray SJ (2016) Notch Signalling in Context. Nature Reviews in Molecular Cell Biology doi:10.1038/nrm.2016.94 (>200 citations, Scopus)
2. Gomez-Lamarca MJ, et al., (2018) Activation of the Notch signalling pathway in vivo elicits changes in CSL nuclear dynamics, Developmental Cell 44(5):611-623.e7
3. Falo-Sanjuan J, et al., (2019) Enhancer Priming Enables Fast and Sustained Transcriptional Responses to Notch Signaling. Developmental Cell 50(4):411-425.e8