Welcome

As an animal, your nervous system allows you to sense and respond to your environment, form and retrieve memories, and learn from past experiences. All of this is possible because the billions of nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord are connected to each other and to other cells throughout your body in very precise ways. Although our brains change as we grow and age, many of the most fundamental connections are formed very early during embryonic development. And, although everyone’s brain is unique, basic patterns of neural connectivity are shared in humans and non-human animals alike.

Our lab is interested in how animal nervous systems are properly wired during development. Using the embryonic insect nervous system as a model, we study the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that specify patterns of neuronal connectivity. We use insects like the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster because they have relatively simple nervous systems, but they are built using the same principles as more complex brains like our own. The molecular and genetic tools available in Drosophila allow us to manipulate genes and cells in the developing fly embryo while we examine how they assemble themselves into a functioning nervous system. For more details about specific projects we are working on in the lab, see our Research page.

Lab News

• Apr 8, 2025, Piyasi Ghosh, Ph.D.
  Piyasi successfully defended her CEMB Ph.D. thesis today, titled "Evolutionarily conserved functions of the gene frazzled in midline axon guidance in Drosophila melanogaster and Tribolium castaneum." Congratulations Dr. Ghosh!
• Mar 10, 2025, Preprint: Evolutionary conservation of midline repulsive signaling by Robo family receptors in flies and mice
  Our lab's newest preprint is live today on bioRxiv! You can read it at this link.
• Feb 3, 2025, Carranza et al., 2025: Slit-independent guidance of longitudinal axons by Drosophila Robo3
  Our paper based on Abigail Carranza's undergraduate research project investigating the functional importance of Slit binding and Robo3's Ig1 domain for longitudinal axon guidance is now available online in peer-reviewed form at Developmental Biology!
• Dec 21, 2024, Preprint: Evolutionary conservation of midline axon guidance activity between Drosophila and Tribolium Frazzled
  Our lab's newest preprint is live today on bioRxiv! You can read it at this link.
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