Developmental biology and reproduction

How are different cells made, organised into tissues, arranged in the correct places and coordinated to form an animal? These are the fundamental questions of developmental biology. At PDN we are investigating many aspects of development, including how cells talk to one another, how they move to new locations, how they assemble and rearrange to make tissues and how their functions change with age. We use a wide range of approaches to study the development of a variety of animal models and humans.

Developmental biology research in PDN is particularly active in several key areas:

the process of turning genes on and off as cells become more specialized, which is fundamental to understanding a key mystery of development: how a single cell, the fertilized egg, gives rise to all the different kinds of cells in our body.
stem cells and the first decisions specifying cell types in the embryo, which will improve the efficacy of in vitro fertilization and advance the new field of regenerative medicine.
the mechanics of cell movement and behavior, which is key to understand how cells coordinate to build the body, fight off infections, and aberrantly move to new locations during cancer metastasis.
development of the nervous system, including how the myriad of different neuron types are programmed and how the neurons make the right connections to provide circuits in the brain.
how the environment of the uterus impacts on foetal development and adult life, which helps us understand pregnancy complications and discover how diseases that occur in adults can be caused by the environment during pregnancy.

Labs

	Adams lab Visualising morphogenetic mechanisms	Baker lab Neurogenic placodes and the neural crest: development of the vertebrate peripheral sensory nervous system
	Basu lab Single-cell and single-molecule imaging approaches to study genes regulation during pluripotent stem cell renewal and differentiation	Boroviak lab Laboratory for primate embryogenesis
	Brand lab Stem cells to synapses: regulation of self-renewal and differentiation in the nervous system	Bray lab Neural and epidermal development in Drosophila: from signalling to morphogenesis
	Brown lab Molecular analysis of morphogenesis	Buckley lab Optogenetically probing cell polarity and brain development
	Colledge lab Transgenic mouse models of human disease: reproductive physiology, cystic fibrosis, and cardiac physiology	Forhead lab Mammalian endocrinology and the hormonal regulation of fetal physiology and development
	Franze lab Mechanics in nervous system development and pathology	Giussani lab How adverse conditions during pregnancy can programme heart disease in the adult offspring
	Herbison lab Properties and functioning of the key neural populations controlling fertility in mammals	Holt lab Axon guidance in the developing brain
	Kolahgar lab Extrinsic regulation of intestinal proliferation and gut maintenance in Drosophila	Lee lab Stem-stromal cell interactions and regulatory networks that allow proper lineage specification and tissue regeneration
niakan_fluorescent_0.png	Niakan lab Understanding the molecular mechanisms that control early human development	Rawlins lab Lung development, maintenance and their mechanisms of disease
	Sanson lab Morphogenesis of the epithelium in Drosophila embryos	Sarris lab How immune cells search tissues and find sites of infection or tissue damage
	Schofield lab Experimental and informatic approaches to understanding human disease	Sferruzzi-Perri lab Etiology of pregnancy complications and the regulation of developmental processes
	Surani lab Mammalian germ cells, pluripotency and epigenesis	Watson lab The epigenetic role of folate during development
	Xiong lab Force generation and mechanical regulation during tissue shape formation	Zernicka-Goetz lab Cell fate, plasticity and pluripotency in the development of the early mouse embryo