Greg Guild
Professor of Biology

Developmental Biology Program

Address

204 Kaplan Wing
415 University Avenue
Philadelphia . PA . 19104

Office tel.: 215 898-3433
Lab tel.: 215 898-3433
Fax: 215 898-8780
E-mail: gguild@sas.upenn.edu

Link(s)

Greg Guild at the Dept of Biology

EDUCATION

North Carolina State University, B.S. (Biological Sciences), 1972

Rutgers University, Ph.D.(Microbiology), 1976

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Eukaryotic cell shape

Key words: Cytoskeleton, cell shape, actin filaments, Drosophila

Search PubMed for articles

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH

How do eukaryotic cells morph into and maintain a myriad of different cell shapes? In many cases, crossbridged bundles of polarized actin filaments provide the cytoskeletal scaffolding for this. We are interested in discovering the critical components required for filament bundling and the assembly principles cells use to generate shape. We use Drosophila as a model system because we can employ molecular and genetic tools to modify cytoskeleton assembly and confocal and electron microscopic techniques to evaluate the cell biological consequences in real time or at high resolution. In order to permit detection of cell shape changes with high sensitivity, we study cells that have an extreme shape – primarily the bristle cells that cover the fly. These are single cells that grow to elongate a beautiful curved extension that is 400 µm in length. We are interested in two specific questions. How are extremely long actin bundles constructed and what role does filament dynamics play in this process. Since all eukaryotes use actin cytoskeletons to establish shape, what we learn from flies is likely to be widely applicable.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Tilney, L.G., P.S. Connelly, L. Ruggiero, K.A. Vranich, L. Ruggiero, and Guild, G.M. (2003) Actin filament turnover regulated by cross-linking accounts for the size, shape, location and number of actin bundles in Drosophila bristles. Mol. Biol. Cell 14: 3953-66.

Guild, G.M., P.S. Connelly, L. Ruggiero, K.A. Vranich, and L.G. Tilney. (2003) Long continuous actin bundles in Drosophila bristles are constructed by overlapping short filaments. J. Cell Biol.162:1069-77

Tilney, L.G., P.S. Connelly, and G.M. Guild. (2004) Microvilli appear to represent the first step in actin bundle formation in Drosophila bristles. J. Cell Sci. 117:3531-3538

Tilney, L.G., P.S. Connelly, L. Ruggiero, K.A. Vranich, L. Ruggiero, Guild, G.M. and DeRosier, D. (2004) The role actin filaments play in providing the characteristic curved form of Drosophila bristles. Mol. Biol. Cell 15: 5481-91.

Guild, G.M., P.S. Connelly, L. Ruggiero, K.A. Vranich and L.G. Tilney (2005) Actin filament bundles in Drosophila wing hairs: Hairs and bristles use different strategies for assembly. Mol. Biol. Cell (in press).

Lab

Lab personnel:

Megan Malloy – Research Specialist
Felina Zolotarev – Undergraduate Student
Bo Zhou – Undergraduate Student
Tim Wilkins – Undergraduate Student
Roslyn Duvall – Undergraduate Student