Lab members

Group leader
Alfonso Martinez Arias

Research assistants

Tina Balayo
Jess Allen

Postdocs

Penelope Hayward
Nicole Gorfinkel
Tibor Kalmar
Silvia Muñoz

Graduate students

Ulla Fiuza
Ana Mateus
Karolina Lada
Fan Cheng
Chia Lim

More information
about group
members and
their projects,
with contact
details, can be
found on the
Group website

Contact: Professor A. Martinez Arias
Address:
Department of Genetics, Downing Street,
Cambridge, CB2 3EH, England
Telephone:
+44 1223 766742
Fax: +44 1223 333992
Email: ama11[at]
hermes.cam.ac.uk

Martinez Arias Lab
Laboratory of the Structure and Function of Living Matter

Outline of the lab

Keywords: signal transduction, cytoskeleton, dynamical systems, ES cells

The patterning of cellular ensembles during embryonic development requires the coordinated activity of a number of signalling pathways. These are usually viewed as devices for the linear transfer of information within the cell which converge at the level of their target genes or proteins. However, the precision and robustness of the processes they mediate jointly suggests that they interact at many different levels and that individual component elements of each pathway contribute to information processing networks rather than to parallel processing units. We are interested in underdstanding the organization and functioning of these networks. The laboratory is organized into three small groups which work together in different but complementary aspects of this problem (go to website at http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/AMA/)

One group studies the way Wnt and Notch signaling organized themselves into a functional module (Wntch) which acts as a 'transistor' in cell fate decisions (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/AMA/Pathways.html). At the moment much of this research is focused in Drosophila and makes use of the genetic and cell biological arsenal of this organism to elucidate the modules that connect elements of the two pathways. We are also in the process of extrapolating our observations to Embryonic Stem cells as a much simpler system to analyze the cell biology of the process.

A second group is focused on the role that transcriptional noise plays in development and pattern formation (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/AMA/Noise.html). One of the consequences of the studies on Wntch signaling is the realization that noise, phenotypic variability and heterogeneity in an otherwise genetically homogeneous substrate, is an important substrate for pattern formation and that much of the function of Wntch signaling is to filter the noise and obtain deterministic and reproducible patterns at the cellular scale. These studies make use of embryonic stem cells.

A third group, led by Nicole Gorfinkiel, studies morphogenesis, using the process of dorsal closure in Drosophila as a model system (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/AMA/Morphogenesis.html). The objective is to develop biomechanical studies of how cell ensembles beget emergent properties which allow them to adopt the complicated shapes that configure an organism.

A common theme running through the three projects is the belief that there are laws and principles in biology and that our duty is to find them.

For further details visit our lab website at http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/AMA/

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For more details please visit our new lab website

Page updated 15 April 2009