Current Research and Scholarly Interests
The planar cell polarity (PCP) signaling pathway polarizes animal cells along an axis parallel to the tissue plane, and in so doing generates long-range organization that can span entire tissues. Although its core proteins and much about their interactions are known, how PCP signaling occurs at a mechanistic level remains fundamentally mysterious. In my current project I will employ novel genetic methods to dissect the logic underlying how cellular asymmetry arises at a molecular level.