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Anna KICHEVA
March 21 at 11:00
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From: IST AUSTRIA – Bertalanffy Foundation building
Will give a seminar entitled:
Regulation and interpretation of morphogen signaling in spinal cord development
As the spinal cord grows during vertebrate embryonic development, an elaborate pattern of molecularly distinct neural progenitor domains forms along the dorsoventral axis. This pattern is established in response to opposing morphogen gradients of dorsally produced BMPs and Wnts and ventrally produced Shh. We are interested in understanding how the dynamics of morphogen signaling in the neural tube are controlled and how they are interpreted to control the downstream pattern and tissue growth. To this end, we combine quantitative assays in embryos and organoids with biophysical models. In our recent work, we studied the formation of morphogen producing domains in the neural tube. As part of this effort, we developed a geometrically controlled 2D organoid system in which cell types of the dorsal neural tube form in self-organized pattern. Our data reveal that this pattern depends on the formation of a BMP signaling gradient with characteristic biphasic temporal dynamics. We show that this signaling dynamics result from coupling fast negative feedback with slow positive regulation of signaling by the specification of an endogenous BMP source. Our results provide new insights into the mechanisms by which morphogen signaling is controlled in the neural tube.
BIOGRAPHY
Anna Kicheva is a group leader at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) since November 2015. Her lab works at the interface between developmental and stem cell biology, biophysics and quantitative biology. The main research interest of the lab is the control of tissue growth and pattern formation in the developing vertebrate neural tube. Anna started her work on neural tube development during her postdoc at the NIMR (currently The Francis Crick Institute) in London with James Briscoe. She did her PhD with Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and the University of Geneva, studying morphogen gradient formation in the Drosophila wing disc.