Regenerative therapy utilizing pluripotent stem cells holds promise for treatment of a variety of pathological conditions. However, the mechanisms that determine the growth, patterning, and homeostasis of tissue from progenitor cells during development versus those involved in tissue regeneration in an adult organism remain largely unknown. Pigment pattern in fishes represents an attractive model system to directly visualize mechanisms of patterning in adults, since fish undergo larval to adult metamorphosis that involves changes in growth and organization of pigment cell populations, and the capacity to regenerate fins permits examination of pigment cell biology during tissue regeneration. The proposed research aims to characterize the naturally occurring cichlid fish orange blotch mutant. Pigment cell migration and differentiation will be comparatively analyzed during adult development and regeneration using spatial and temporal analysis, as well as in situ-based characterization of differentiation state with lineage markers. Also, the orange blotch gene will be identified within the previously mapped interval using a directed mapping approach and candidate gene analysis.
| Roberts, Reade B; Moore, Emily C; Kocher, Thomas D (2017) An allelic series at pax7a is associated with colour polymorphism diversity in Lake Malawi cichlid fish. Mol Ecol 26:2625-2639 |
| Roberts, Reade B; Ser, Jennifer R; Kocher, Thomas D (2009) Sexual conflict resolved by invasion of a novel sex determiner in Lake Malawi cichlid fishes. Science 326:998-1001 |
