Associate Professor
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Bioinformatics; Cell growth, differentiation and development; Gene Expression; Genomics and proteomics; Molecular Basis of Disease; Molecular genetics; Neurobiology; RNA; Signal Transduction; Stem Cells; Transcription and Translation; Transgenic organisms; Vision science
We are interested in the fundamental mechanisms underlying the shift of cellular states from progenitors to fully functional neurons during neural development. We address this issue by studying cell fate specification and differentiation in the developing neural retina. Our efforts are on identifying key regulators, uncovering their roles in individual cell lineages, and understanding how they carry out these roles. One area of our research is focused on how transcription factors influence the epigenetic landscape along the retinal ganglion cell lineage. We have also begun to investigate how posttranscriptional control of gene expression affects retinal cell differentiation. We conduct our research using a combinatorial approach of genetics, molecular biology, genomics, single cell techniques, and bioinformatics.