TITLE:

BUILDING THE PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM: TRANSCRIPTIONAL CONTROL, SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION AND MICRORNAS

DATE:

Friday, Feb 17th, 2012

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Robert Zeller.
Department of Biology.
Computational Science Research Center.
San Diego State University.

ABSTRACT:

Complicated biological processes are often modeled in simple animal models such as Drosophila and the nematode C. elegans. However, the closest invertebrate relative to humans is the group of animals that include ascidians, commonly called sea squirts. We are interested in understanding how the information encoded in the genome is decoded during the process of embryonic development to build a multicellular organism composed of differentiated cells and tissues. Our current research efforts focus on how sensory cells of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) are formed. These cells share numerous similarities with hair cells in the vertebrate ear which detect sound. We have discovered that numerous evolutionarily conserved regulatory molecules play important roles in specifying the PNS neurons. The numerous similarities in gene usage between the ascidian PNS and vertebrate hair cells suggests that these molecules operate in a gene regulatory network “kernel” that evolved more than 500 million years ago.

HOST:

Dr. Jose Castillo.

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