Drosophila ventral furrow morphogenesis: rapid inactivation of cytoskeletal regulators by CALI

大多数动物，包括人类，都是从一个小的细胞球开始的。为了形成组织、肢体和器官，这些细胞分裂、移动和改变形状，形成一个健康的个体。生物体的遗传程序指示其细胞采用某些特征，细胞作出适当的反应。明登博士实验室的中心目标是了解基因程序和细胞行为之间的联系。细胞运动是由大量的蛋白质控制的，这些蛋白质统称为细胞骨架，相当于骨骼和肌肉的分子。所有细胞都使用细胞骨架蛋白来调节它们的形状，发育生物学家研究细胞形状的变化如何导致胚胎中特定组织的形成。明登博士的实验室对细胞最初如何决定形成果蝇的肌肉和免疫细胞特别感兴趣。为了研究这些细胞如何在不影响其他细胞的情况下改变形状，他设计了一种依赖激光的方案，在细胞形状发生变化的精确时间使特定的细胞骨架蛋白失活。这些研究将确定细胞形状变化所需的蛋白质，这种方法将广泛适用于各种实验生物的细胞行为分析。这项工作更广泛的影响在于它对本科生和研究生的跨学科培训。这项研究涉及化学、生物化学、细胞和分子生物学、遗传学、最先进的显微镜、图像分析和蛋白质组学，以解决细胞和发育生物学中长期存在的问题。迄今为止，他的实验室已经利用之前的政府资助培养了来自生物、化学、数学、统计、计算机科学、机器人和生物医学工程等部门的50多名本科生、14名研究生和8名博士后。这笔资金将使明登博士继续为年轻科学家提供优秀的跨学科培训。

Most animals, including humans, start life as a small ball of cells. To form tissues, limbs and organs, these cells divide, move and change their shape to form a healthy individual. An organism's genetic program instructs its cells to adopt certain characteristics and the cells respond appropriately. The central goal of Dr. Minden's laboratory is to understand the connection between the genetic program and cell behavior. Cell movement is controlled by a large number of proteins collectively referred to as the cytoskeleton, the molecular equivalent to bones and muscles. Cytoskeletal proteins are used by all cells to regulate their shape, and developmental biologists study how cell shape changes lead to the formation of particular tissues in the embryo. Dr. Minden's laboratory is particularly interested in how cells first decide to form muscles and immune cells of fruit flies. To study how these cells change their shape without affecting other cells, he has devised a laser-dependent scheme to inactivate specific cytoskeletal proteins at the precise time at which cell shape changes take place. These studies will identify proteins required for cell shape changes, and this method will be broadly applicable to the analysis of cell behavior in a wide variety of experimental organisms.The broader impact of this work resides in its interdisciplinary training of undergraduate and graduate students. This research involves chemistry, biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, genetics, state-of-the-art microscopy, image analysis and proteomics to address longstanding questions in cell and developmental biology. To date, his laboratory has used its previous government funding to train over 50 undergraduates, 14 graduate students and 8 postdoctoral fellows from the departments of biology, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, computer science, robotics, and biomedical engineering. This funding will allow Dr. Minden to continue to provide outstanding interdisciplinary training to young scientists.