Department: Molecular & Cellular Physiology

O

O'Brien, Lucy

Academic Appointments Assistant Professor, Molecular & Cellular Physiology

Research Interest
Many adult organs tune their functional capacity to variable levels of physiologic demand. Adaptive organ resizing breaks the allometry of the body plan that was established during development, suggesting that it occurs through different mechanisms. Emerging evidence points to stem cells as key players in these mechanisms. We use the Drosophila midgut, a stem-cell based organ analogous to the vertebrate small intestine, as a simple model to uncover the rules that govern adaptive remodeling.