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Developmental Information Processing and a Gene Regulatory Network

Charles (Titus) Brown

California Institute of Technology

Date:  Friday, April 7, 2006
Time: 10:10am-11:10am
Place: 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences

Host: Charles Ofria



Abstract: Throughout development, information from diverse signals and gene expression patterns is integrated at the DNA level. In recent years, we have begun to understand how this information is interpreted at the cis-regulatory level, and how individual cis-regulatory programs are combined into an overarching gene regulatory network (GRN) that controls specification and differentiation in the early development of the sea urchin.

My graduate work in the Davidson Lab deals with three aspects of this GRN: first, an in-depth experimental analysis of how information is integrated at a single promoter; second, computational tools for locating and defining cis-regulatory modules; and third, an exhaustive genomic search for the remaining players in the GRN. I will discuss these projects in the context of the sea urchin GRN, and I will also discuss the future for building similar GRNs for vertebrate developmental programs.

 



Biography: Not Available