Research Interests
I am interested in spatial pattern formation in biological development. My research has been in two main areas: plant shape change (morphogenesis) and early positioning in fruit fly embryos.
In plants, I am primarily interested in the interplay between growth and spatial patterning. Plant development frequently involves local modification of the surface to produce outgrowth and achieve particular shapes. Theories are becoming well-developed for how growth factors are localized, but how these localization dynamics operate in a growing system (especially if they are catalyzing the growth) is less well-characterized. I have used Turing-type reaction-diffusion models to catalyze surface growth and investigate the fully coupled growth-patterning dynamics. More recently, I have developed models for spatial patterning of the phytohormone auxin. These are being applied to leaf development and to conifer embryo development.
Summer students in my group (see Plant Experiments tab) conduct quantitative experiments. We have characterized the spatial positioning of cotyledons on conifer embryos, providing data with which to test patterning mechanisms.
In flies, I have worked on how embryos reliably make it through early spatial patterning events: how do the biochemical and gene regulatory networks that determine spatial positioning of cell types stay robust to external variability (in temperature, maternal dosage, size, for example) and to the noise intrinsic to chemical reactions? My work is computational, both on the data analysis of confocal embryo images, and on the development and simulation of variability in spatial pattern forming networks.
In plants, I am primarily interested in the interplay between growth and spatial patterning. Plant development frequently involves local modification of the surface to produce outgrowth and achieve particular shapes. Theories are becoming well-developed for how growth factors are localized, but how these localization dynamics operate in a growing system (especially if they are catalyzing the growth) is less well-characterized. I have used Turing-type reaction-diffusion models to catalyze surface growth and investigate the fully coupled growth-patterning dynamics. More recently, I have developed models for spatial patterning of the phytohormone auxin. These are being applied to leaf development and to conifer embryo development.
Summer students in my group (see Plant Experiments tab) conduct quantitative experiments. We have characterized the spatial positioning of cotyledons on conifer embryos, providing data with which to test patterning mechanisms.
In flies, I have worked on how embryos reliably make it through early spatial patterning events: how do the biochemical and gene regulatory networks that determine spatial positioning of cell types stay robust to external variability (in temperature, maternal dosage, size, for example) and to the noise intrinsic to chemical reactions? My work is computational, both on the data analysis of confocal embryo images, and on the development and simulation of variability in spatial pattern forming networks.