RESEARCH

Biological and chemical engineers can contribute significantly toward understanding how organ size and shape are regulated with a diverse toolkit: solving reaction-diffusion and transport problems, utilizing control and decision theory, applying quantitative and statistical methods of analysis, and employing experimental knowledge in the analysis of soft materials.

The research focus of the lab can be classified into three broad areas.

Biophysics of epithelial organ development and morphogenesis

There is a great need to study developmental biology from an engineering perspective to develop new strategies for building tissues and treating degenerative tissue diseases. Probing animal development with quantitative tools can potentially improve traditional methods of tissue engineering as well as inspire completely novel methods for creating synthetic organs. Toward this end, the research program in the lab focuses on integrating chemical and mechanical signaling at the tissue scale through advancing the state of the art for in vitro tissue culture and utilizing computational modeling of tissue patterning and morphogenesis.

The fruit fly, Drosophila, has served as an important model system for identifying tumor suppressor genes, which are conserved in humans as well, and due to the genetic tools available is the main model system investigated by the lab.

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Growth control of epithelial tissues

Understanding how individual cells and whole organs regulate their size is essential to developing new techniques in treating cancer. What is lacking is a quantitative understanding of how cells incorporate external inputs from their surroundings to regulate final tissue size. Our lab employs live imaging using confocal microscopy, quantitative data analysis and modeling to further our understanding the regulatory network determining robust growth control.

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Tissue and cell culture optimization

In recent years, insect cells have become important for heterologous recombinant protein production using the baculovirus expression system. Developing a better quantitative understanding of the metabolism and kinetics of insect cell growth will significantly improve the production process of novel therapeutics and vaccines. A greater challenge is identifying the requirements for growing organs in vitro, which have more stringent needs than established cell lines. Current research focuses on identifying extrinsic growth factors and improving media for Drosophila wing imaginal discs, an established model for studying the genetics and biophysics of growth control. Future efforts will be directed toward designing next-generation insect culture media by identifying novel growth factors and developing tools for growing organs in vitro.

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