Description of Research Expertise

Research Interests
Eukaryotic cell shape

Key words: Drosophila, cytoskeleton, actin filaments, actin binding proteins, cell shape.

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.

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