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My current research at the University of Iowa is very much related to work I began as a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Mary Lou King. I am interested in one of the central problems in developmental biology; how a single-celled egg differentiates into an organism containing many functionally different cell and tissue types. Because changes in the activity of genes involved in the control of early development are known to cause human birth defects and disease, it is important to understand how these genes function in normal embryos. Current work in my lab seeks to understand the role of proteins involved in early brain development using the frog Xenopus laevis as a model organism. Recently, I have started to investigate the involvement of two transcription factor genes, called ZIC2 and TGIF. Interestingly, mutations in human ZIC2 and TGIF cause the common brain malformation, holoprosencephaly, in which brain growth is diminished and the left and right hemispheres fail to form. We hope that, by identifying the mechanisms through which these molecules function in a model organism, novel candidate genes for birth defects such as HPE will be discovered. View more alumni profiles
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Office of Graduate Studies
University of Miami
Miller School of Medicine
POB 016189
Miami, Florida 33101-6189
Phone: 305-243-1094
Fax: 305-243-3593
ogs@med.miami.edu
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