Most animals, including humans, start life as a small ball of cells. To form tissues, limbs and organs, these cells divide, move and change their shape to form a healthy individual. An organism's genetic program instructs its cells to adopt certain characteristics and the cells respond appropriately. The central goal of Dr. Minden's laboratory is to understand the connection between the genetic program and cell behavior. Cell movement is controlled by a large number of proteins collectively referred to as the cytoskeleton, the molecular equivalent to bones and muscles. Cytoskeletal proteins are used by all cells to regulate their shape, and developmental biologists study how cell shape changes lead to the formation of particular tissues in the embryo. Dr. Minden's laboratory is particularly interested in how cells first decide to form muscles and immune cells of fruit flies. To study how these cells change their shape without affecting other cells, he has devised a laser-dependent scheme to inactivate specific cytoskeletal proteins at the precise time at which cell shape changes take place. These studies will identify proteins required for cell shape changes, and this method will be broadly applicable to the analysis of cell behavior in a wide variety of experimental organisms.
The broader impact of this work resides in its interdisciplinary training of undergraduate and graduate students. This research involves chemistry, biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, genetics, state-of-the-art microscopy, image analysis and proteomics to address longstanding questions in cell and developmental biology. To date, his laboratory has used its previous government funding to train over 50 undergraduates, 14 graduate students and 8 postdoctoral fellows from the departments of biology, chemistry, mathematics, statistics, computer science, robotics, and biomedical engineering. This funding will allow Dr. Minden to continue to provide outstanding interdisciplinary training to young scientists.
